Why I Sing the Songs I Sing: An exploration into the creative strands that contribute to my performance of song.

Karan Casey

PhD Arts Practice

Supervisor: Dr Sandra Joyce Professor Mick Moloney Course Director: Professor Helen Phelan

Submitted to the University of Limerick September 2019

1

2 Abstract Why I Sing the Songs I Sing: An exploration into the creative strands that contribute to my performance of song. Karan Casey This thesis explores my role as a creative female voice within Irish folk and traditional music, dealing with questions relating to my creative process, the performance of social justice, orality, performativity and social activism. My two PhD performances provide the central inherent intellectual and emotional contributions to the philosophical considerations that this thesis formulates. The first chapter is a road map outlining arts practice methodological and theoretical approaches, situating the research primarily in my performances and in my auto-ethnographic writing. Also introduced are the more traditional research methods of ethnographic interviews, data from archival work, panel discussions and a questionnaire. The cultural framework and background of traditional singing was interrogated in Chapter 2 and contextualised by an overview of the literature on Irish traditional and folk song. I specifically explored the origins of political folk song as it forms a central part of my repertoire. I utilized my performances to explore further how performativity, orality, arrangement and the reworking of the songs is deeply embedded in my creative process. Chapters 3 and 4 involve an intensive interrogation of my two performances. Chapter 3 focusses on my first performance of traditional, folk and self-composed songs. It highlights issues relating to my creative process, particularly my song-writing and the central role of the performance of social justice. In Chapter 4 I concentrate on my second performance entitled I Walked into My Head. This performance was a radical new departure for me involving song-poems, sound design, piano playing and movement as well as newly-composed and traditional songs. I particularly emphasise here the effect of my social activism and research on my performance. This thesis affords an insight into my role as a creative female performer in the world of Irish traditional and folk music. I am a folk singer who is greatly informed by traditional Irish singing. My performance is eclectic, borrowing freely from other musical realms but reframing them through my own musical personality. All the aspects of my creativity are important to my performance, particularly my creative-writing. The performance of social justice is integral to my creative life and illuminates how I feel about the world. It contributes to my connection with the audience and along with my activism has the inherent power to enact social change.

3 Declaration

I, the undersigned, hereby declare that this submission is entirely my own work, in my own words, and that all sources used in researching it are fully acknowledged and all quotations properly identified. It has not been submitted, in whole or in part, by me or another person, for the purpose of obtaining any other credit / grade. I understand the ethical implications of my research, and this work meets the requirements of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee.

4 Acknowledgments Sincerest thanks to Dr Sandra Joyce and Global Distinguished Professor of Music Mick Moloney for supervising this thesis. Many thanks to Professor Helen Phelan, my classmates and to the faculty at The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance of the University of Limerick. I would also like to thank Lucy Dawson for her videography on I Walked into My Head and the performance in Dolan’s of Limerick. Huge thanks to Síle Denvir and Méabh Ní Fhuartháin for the deeply enlightening conversations on academia and research. I appreciate the generous support of Fintan Vallely, all at FairPlé and Úna Clarke, Denise Carroll and Yvonne Brady. Many thanks to my dear friend Dorothy Bukantz who really stepped in and contributed not just on an intellectual and emotional level but also with the copy editing. Thank you Dorothy.

The writing and performance of I Walked into My Head could not have happened without the enthusiasm and generosity of Olwen Fouéré, Dr Niall Vallely, Professor Mel Mercier and Bill Whelan. Massive thanks to Paul O’Donnell, Cónal Creedon, and Professor Joseph O’Connor for their creative inputs. Niamh Dunne and Sean Óg Graham have been minding me both musically and emotionally and have encouraged me along the way, thank you both. Thanks also to my dad Karl Casey for his great encouragement, support and love over the years.

My two life gurus are my two beautiful, ever evolving and changing daughters Muireann and Áine Casey Vallely. They are the light of my life and they put up with a lot during this PhD voyage. Thank you women. Of course the person who deserves the most thanks again, is my husband Niall Vallely. His constant love and attention through this expedition and his insightful own ‘narrative inquiry’ into the work were particularly illuminating and helpful for the process. Thank you so much Niall. Love k

5 Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis with much love to Niall Vallely, Muireann and Áine Casey Vallely

6 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Declaration 4 Acknowledgments 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 7 List of Appendices 9 Memory Stick Contents 10 Introduction 11 Chapter 1: “… a song is more than ‘just a song” 14 Situating self 15 Arts Practice Research 25 Methodological approaches 31 Auto-ethnography 32 Narrative Inquiry 34 Interviews - ethnographic research 35 Archival research 37 Fiction-based research 38 Performances 39 Experiential research 39 Bibliographic research and outputs 40 Theoretical Underpinnings 41 Conclusion 46 Chapter 2: Irish Traditional and Folk Song 48 Irish traditional and folk song 50 American Folk Singing 53 Singing technique 54 Living example 55 Historical overview of traditional songs and singing 56 Lays 56 Songs: “The Rocks of Bawn” and “Hollis Brown” 59 The Singing of Traditional Songs 61 Performativity 61 Accompaniment 62 Satire for the performance of social justice 62 Orality 63 Connection with the audience 64 Creativity and reworking the song 65 Overview of Political Irish Song and Folk Song 66 Conclusion 69 Chapter 3: Creative process and the performance of social justice 70 Performance: Dolan’s of Limerick. 25th of April 2018. 72 Gestalt Performance 73 The creative process 74 A traditional singer writing self-composed songs 75 Self-composed songs 77

7 “Home” 78 Reflection on the performance through the arts practice lens 79 “Lovely Annie” 80 Exploring the performance 80 “Down in the Glen” 81 Exploring the performance 84 Questionnaire 84 The performance of social justice 88 Anti-war songs: “The King’s Shilling” and “Man of God” 88 “Ballad of Accounting” 92 “If only you would just sing and not talk” 92 Documentation of activism 93 “Hollis Brown” Arrangement 94 Conclusion 96 Chapter 4: I Walked into My Head 97 Feminism 98 Singing and activism 99 Is singing enough? The evolution of FairPlé 104 Second PhD performance - I Walked into My Head 106 Place and people 106 Contextual framework 107 Research and the creative process 108 Panel discussion 109 Areas of challenge for a performance 110 Themes 110 Listening 111 Experiential research 112 An reacaire 112 Moving the project along 113 Other challenges 114 Methodological Approaches 114 Listening and research 115 Movement 116 Travel and choice 116 Methodological approaches to writing “Heathrow, again” 117 “Skywoman” or “Dublin Airport Carpark” 118 Song section 118 “Voices” 119 Conclusion 122 Chapter 5: Conclusion 124 Bibliography 129 Discography 138 Personal Discography 140 Appendices 146

8 List of Appendices

Appendix 1: Ethno-fiction 146

Appendix 2: Performance 1 – Song Lyrics 147 Karan Casey, Niall Vallely, Niamh Dunne and Sean Óg Graham at Dolan’s of Limerick

Appendix 3: Audience Questionnaire 157

Appendix 4: Call to Action - Facebook post 158

Appendix 5: FairPlé speech 161

Appendix 6: Performance 2 – Script 168 I Walked into My Head

Appendix 7: Statistics on Gender 187

9 Memory Stick Contents

Video of Performance 1 – Dolan’s of Limerick April 25th 2018 Filmed and Edited by Lucy Dawson and Shane Vaughan Sound by Liam Marley

Video of Performance 2 – Theatre 1, University of Limerick April 4th 2019 Filmed and Edited by Lucy Dawson Sound by Danny Bride Lights by Róisín Berg

10 Introduction

My name is Karan Casey and I am a singer. My singing is motivated by a deep love of song and is an expression of my understanding of the world. This thesis explores my role as a creative female voice within Irish folk and traditional music, dealing with questions relating to my creative process, the performance of social justice, orality, performativity and social activism. My two PhD performances provide the central inherent intellectual contributions to the philosophical considerations that this thesis formulates. Stemming from my long experience as an interpreter of folk and traditional songs and as a writer of newly composed songs I plan to explore the performative elements that I bring to my singing. These give meaning and a life-force to the song texts I choose. In each performance I believe that new ideas are created, musically, gesturally and emotionally, relating and connecting or finding meaning with the audience and creating a social bond that holds cultural and political understanding within that community at that particular time. Stokes argues that “even though they are out of the ordinary experiences, music and dance do encourage people to feel that they are in touch with an essential part of themselves, their emotions and their communities” (Stokes, 1994, p. 13). In examining my own unique approach to this varied repertoire my aim in this research is to interrogate my personal engagement with the creative process. My auto-ethnographic writings are a critical component of this interrogation. My own creative practice is very much informed by the performance of traditional Irish song and folk song. This is the cultural framework for much of my singing. Both folk and Irish traditional song cultures have deep symbolic rules or implied rules. I will be looking at these implied rules or tendencies as I prefer to call them to examine what creative forces are at play when I perform the songs. The creative process or the process of reworking as Ó Súilleabháin asserts in terms of traditional music “…is the evolution of such a process which creates new music out of the old” (Ó Súilleabháin, 1981). He goes on to argue that this process or practice becomes the creative centre of any musical culture. I examine my artistic practice through further exploration of my song-writing and my ‘reworking’ of the traditional and folk songs. The two performances provide the core data for this examination. I investigate the creative processes involved in my song- writing and performing. I explore how my performance of social justice issues as a

11 woman is expressed through the songs and the performance and then zoom out to view the cultural and political female voice within this framework. Because of the important influence of my social activism on my performance I examine some of campaigns I have been involved in. The first chapter focusses on arts practice methodological approaches to research within this PhD, drawing on texts from Chang, Clandinin and Connelly, Freeman, Smith and Dean, and Bartleet among others. Reflecting upon the key experiences that have helped to shape these performances, these will be viewed through one of the key arts practice methodologies: auto-ethnographic writing. Other methodological approaches, including ethnographic interviews and experiential research are outlined. My understanding of the theoretical concepts relating to performance are mostly through the writings of Schechner, Phelan and Barthes. Theoretical underpinning from Davis, Ní Shíocháin and Csikszentmihalyi are introduced as well as sub themes from Lakoff and Johnson emphasising the philosophical concept of embodied knowledge. In Chapter 2 I branch out from the self to interrogate the cultural backgrounds of Irish traditional and folk singing, looking at performativity, orality, satire, and some song texts. I examine these elements through the prism of my singing. I contextualise these genres through writings from Moloney, Shields, Ó Tuama and Kinsella, Ní Shíocháin, and Vallely but primarily through my practice. Chapter 3 focusses on my first PhD performance of traditional, folk and self- composed songs with my band at Dolan’s of Limerick. The documentation of this performance through an audio-visual recording allowed me to reflect and examine my creative process, how I write songs and connect with the audience. From data collection in a questionnaire gathered after the performance I substantiate and challenge my own perceived notions around a performance. I interrogate where I perform and with whom, as well as reflecting on issues of a social and temporal context to emphasise the actual experience of performance. “Another argument in favour of experience brought to the forefront by the ethnography of performance is that research is to a great extent particularized by time, place, personality, and social circumstance” (Kisliuk, 2008, p. 193). I also utilise data from ethnographic interviews conducted with some of the other performers. During this research one of the major themes that emerged was the performance of social justice which I discuss in relation to the songs I sing.

12 Chapter 4 is an exploration of the second performance, a new piece that I composed called I Walked into My Head. This was constructed as a new style of performance highlighting many of the themes that had emerged and were important to me during the research. I refer to the ethnographic interviews with other musicians and draw on data from a panel discussion that took place after the second PhD performance. I discuss a feminist movement I helped to found called FairPlé, as an example of my activism and its importance to my performance. I explore how my own creative female voice is expressed through my singing, song-writing and performances and how they have evolved drawing particularly on Davis and Ni Shíocháin I examine the social justice issues that evolved during the research. Lastly I draw all of these strands together: my background of traditional and folk singing; my deep experiential research which has been a lifelong love of song and singing, my connection with the audience, and the musicians; using data gathered through discussions and interviews. Primarily drawing on my documentation of the performances and the reflection gained through auto-ethnographic writing I present the research findings achieved during the first and second performances and the three years of research.

13 Chapter 1: “… a song is more than ‘just a song”

“… a song is more that ‘just a song’; rather it is a hotbed of thought and identity formation” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 1).

The three primary creative strands that I focus on in this thesis are: 1. being a female Irish singer who is greatly informed by Irish traditional and folk song culture; 2. a creative person who writes new songs and song-poems and reworks traditional songs through performativity; 3. the performance of social justice as a woman.

Since this is an arts practice PhD my primary research is my practice. I made an audio-visual recording of the performances and analysed how I perform my songs. The other main methodological approach is auto-ethnographic writing. I myself (auto), study (graphic), my culture (ethnos) in relation to my singing performances. Ellis defines auto-ethnography as “research, writing, short story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political” (Ellis, 2004, p. xix). It is a form of study where people’s personal experience is explored and observed through self-reflection and writing. This self-narrative or autobiographical work is connected to the identities of culture, politics and social studies to give it a deeper and wider understanding and meaning. In writing a personal narrative I use my professional performative skills as a spring board to examine how I evolve as a singer and composer with a view to capturing the deeply personal approach to my art: “self is a carrier of culture” (Chang, 2008, p. 125). Other methodological approaches that I use for my research include: archival research; interviewing other musicians that I work with; collecting data from an audience questionnaire and a post-performance panel discussion; interrogating my own experiential research of performance (attending concerts, listening and performing) to shed some light on my performances; documentation of the performances in an audio visual recording; and reflection on the performances themselves. The main philosophical and conceptual texts that I draw from are Angela Davis (1998), Tríona Ní Shíocháin (2018) and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1996). My understanding of the theoretical concepts relating to performance are mostly through the

14 writings of Richard Schechner (1988), Peggy Phelan (1998), and Barthes (1977) based on Performance Studies. In terms of the arts practice approach to research I utilize texts from Chang (2008), Freeman (2010), Smith and Dean (2009) and Bartleet ((2009) among others. Some relevant contextualisation for the background subjects of the Irish traditional and folk songs focus on writings from Ó Tuama and Kinsella (1981), Lord (1960), Moloney (2016), Vallely (2011), Shields (1993) and again Ní Shíocháin (2018). Other sub-themes that I allude to during the thesis centre around somatics or ‘embodied knowledge’, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980), being the foundational and revolutionary writings that advocate the use of ‘embodied knowledge’ to explain the embodied dimension of the arts practice approach or how my body becomes the central processing hub for my performances. In my case I am arguing that my performative research is constantly ‘topped-up’ or enlightened with each and every engagement in my practice and new insights and experiential knowledges are continually sought and give meaning to the songs in performance. In this chapter I explain the key formative moments in my artistic practice utilizing an auto-ethnographic approach and explore the terms important to this arts practice research PhD. I look at the methodological approaches that are pertinent to my own arts practice, noting that my performances are my primary research. Finally, I discuss the theoretical underpinnings that I have focused on to substantiate the philosophical viewpoints that I am arguing for through my practice. To explain how I came to this research I invite you into my head in order to gain access to the key moments in my artistic life that have led me along this pathway. Through this auto-ethnographic writing I will illuminate many of the enriching experiences in my life which have engineered a winding road to this juncture called research.

Situating self My name is Karan Casey and I have been a singer for as long as I can remember. I was born in Waterford, Ireland in 1968. One of my earliest memories is of standing on a table and singing into a curtain rope for my two grandmothers, Mary and Josie, both fine singers, and here I was performing for them. They were a great audience. I couldn’t have been more than three years of age. This is my first memory and experience of performance that I can remember but I know that my mother sang to us all of the time, often humming

15 around the house even though she was a self-professed ‘crow.’ So here I was held lovingly in the palms of three very experienced and beloved exponents of song. My other most formative memory of performance is at my parent’s parties. Everyone had to perform something and my Dad Karl held forth ‘conducting’ us all through the process, having the ‘noble call.’ The ‘noble call’ is where each performer can call on the next performer. Any song, poem or recitation was greeted with great respect and ‘order and hush’ was organized so that the performer would have a space to be heard. My Dad, Karl, is a great singer and he really loves songs. His own singing is my deepest, longest and most transformative memory of what singing can achieve. He is able to turn a room around and wrap all of our emotions up in one fell swoop. He always told me to ‘just do what you want to do. Follow your heart’ (Casey, 1980). Both my parents Karl and Anne Casey established in me a great love of life and song. Myself and my two brothers, Keith and Dick were probably that last generation of children to roam the countryside freely, to be gone all day and just come home for dinner. This gave me a great love of freedom and a deep connection to the land and woods that we trekked through most days of our childhood. I believe that ‘play’ and the imagination are essentially connected, this connection will be explored more further on in the thesis. I believe you have to exercise ‘play’ and compassion to get to your imagination and to perform a creative act. Being able to explore and roam the countryside and return home to the constant love of my mother gave us great space to grow up and ‘just be’. This attitude was mirrored by the community at large as we were minded by the local community and we bonded greatly especially in our music sessions at the weekends. In Ballyduff I was exposed to traditional singing in the Foran household, our neighbours in Ballyduff village, and I loved the communal aspect of performing in the ‘Ballad group’1 playing the bodhrán for the tunes and singing the songs. This was presided over by the matriarch Winifred Foran

1 Ballad group: an vocal and instrumental group mainly formed to compete in Scór competitions held in Ireland. Scór is organized by the Gaelic Athletic Association to promote Irish culture among its members. http://www.gaa.ie/the-gaa/cultur-agus- gaeilge/scor

16 who baked oat biscuits and ran the household while we practiced. I heard Clannad2 for the first time in that household. In the church choir I was learning hymns and more ‘modern’ songs that were arranged in a semi-classical style. In the Irish dance classes, I learnt some basic Irish dancing skills which soon changed to disco dancing to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder’s American pop and soul music. I was also attending classical piano lessons with Mrs. Nugent and struggling through the grade exams and having singing lessons for the solo singing competitions in Scór with Lupeta Sheenan, who was an artist and an opera singer. All of my teachers were fine examples of strong female role models. They instilled in me a deep respect for teachers and I admire so much their deep intelligences and their commitment and willingness to give of it so generously. Alongside of this informal and formal musical learning I also wrote songs and poems but I kept this part of life a quiet secret. In 1980 I went to Newtown school in Waterford City. This was a whole new cultural experience for me. The ethos of the school was Quaker. Anna Haslam, one of the founders of the Irish women’s movement, went to Newtown school and while there I found myself absorbing some feminist thinking. From my experience in this new environment it felt as if some women didn’t just think they were equal to men, they knew they were. Again this feminist perspective was shaping my internal thinking greatly. Musically I continued the piano exams, the Scór competitions from home, and I started singing in a folk band with Áine and Martin Furey. Martin and Áine are part of the famous Furey family of musicians. I also started entering pub competitions as a folk singer and won many of them, singing Mary Black3 and Christy Moore4 songs. I had also

2 Clannad: An Irish traditional and pop family group who emerged in the 1970s, gained worldwide acclaim for ‘The Theme from Harry’s Game’ and were the first group to sing in Irish on Top of the Pops. http://www.clannad.ie 3 Mary Black: Folk and traditional singer who recorded 12 solo albums and 6 compilation albums. A major Irish recording artist whose albums went gold and multi- platinum, she also recorded with De Dannan and Emmylou Harris, Maura O’Connell and Steve Martin. 4 Christy Moore: Ireland’s foremost folk singer. Perhaps the most influential political folk singer of his time he has recorded multiple albums and won numerous awards. Founding member of the bands Planxty and Moving Hearts. Authored his autobiography in 2001 One Voice.

17 started to go to Katie Kearney’s, a venue out on the Tramore road, where I soaked up the Mary Black, Mary Coughlan5, Jimmy McCarthy6 and Maura O’Connell7 concerts. I had found folk music and I was hooked. I was establishing myself as a singer and I sang and played the piano at many of the school concerts. I was still writing a journal and attempting to sing my own songs. I had sung a couple of them for Martin and Áine Furey, Martin himself being a fine songwriter. Meeting Finbar Furey8 their Dad, was my first exposure to a professional musician, himself an example of a traditional musician who moved to folk music during their career. Finbar and his wife Sheila, Martin and Áine were nothing but encouraging and I have very fond memories of our times together. So this was a deeply enjoyable and powerfully potent creative period in my life that I brought with me into my later performances. In 1987 I went to college in UCD. For the first year I studied Music, Italian and Greek and Roman Civilisation. I also attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music and continued my piano grades and started classical vocal training formally. I was in the UCD Chamber Choir which I loved. My lack of classical music training left me feeling very vulnerable in what was then a B.A. very much informed by the classical tradition, if not exclusively so. I felt very ill-equipped to cope, despite my piano teacher’s previous efforts. My minimal music theory definitely held me back in this environment. College life was

5Mary Coughlan: A jazz and folk singer who recorded 16 exceptionally well received albums that went into the Irish charts. On the success of her albums she was invited onto ‘A Woman’s Heart’ tour and album. 6 Jimmy MacCarthy: One of Ireland’s most beloved songwriters. He has written songs which have been recorded by Christy Moore, Mary Black, Finbar Wright, Maura O'Connell, The Corrs and Westlife. Songs include "Ride On", "Missing You", "Bright Blue Rose" and "Mystic Lipstick". "No Frontiers", "Katie", "Adam at the Window", "As I Leave Behind Neidín". MacCarthy also co-wrote Westlife's "Angel's Wings." 7 Maura O’Connell: Irish singer and actress who has recorded 12 albums that gained great critical acclaim and went into the Irish charts, much beloved Irish singer with American country leanings in the production in her albums and song choices. Her works include the songs of Jimmy MacCarthy, Kim Richey, Van Morrison, John Prine, Eric Clapton and Patty Griffin. She has toured and worked with Mary Black, Paul Brady, Moya Brennan, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tim O'Brien, Dolly Parton, Sarah Dugas, Kate Rusby and Darrell Scott. 8 Finbarr Furey: A multi-instrumentalist and Irish folksinger from the famed Furey family of musicians. Had hits such as “When you were Sweet Sixteen” and “The Lonesome Boatman”.

18 proving difficult as well, perhaps because I was trying to do too much at the one time, a trait I fear that has not been lost. I was also the first person in my family to go to College and I felt a tad lost in this environment. Leaving the music department, I continued the B.A. in ‘just’ Italian and Greek and Roman Civilisation. This was a huge disappointment to myself and my parents, something I regret to this day. However, I had been introduced to jazz by a saxophone player, Lorcan Fullam who I had met in the production of Grease in UCD where I sang “Blue Moon”. Lorcan began encouraging me to sing jazz. So began a lifelong love of jazz. When I heard Ella Fitzgerald for the first time I was completely mesmerised. I very seriously started to study jazz, listening every hour in the day if I could and emulating the sounds and singing of both Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. I was in heaven. I then got a gig for 5 nights a week in George’s Bistro (a Lebanese restaurant and small music venue in Dublin) singing jazz and I started singing at jazz sessions around Dublin eventually doing my own gigs in Dublin, Naas and guesting out in the jazz session at the Airport Hotel. While living in Dublin I started to go to the theatre and found I absolutely loved it. I ended up living with Marina Carr the playwright, Deirdre Carr a visual artist, and Brenda Donoghue the radio host so our flat became a hotbed of conversation around the arts and we all began to learn how to navigate life as artists. Even if we didn’t see ourselves in this light that’s what we were at. I went to a lot of Marina’s plays and witnessed the magic of theatre and loved Olwen Fouéré’s9 work in her productions. Managing to get through college I found myself wanting to be a songwriter and a jazz singer in Dublin in 1990. For a couple of years, I was very lost. Writing songs, singing songs, learning new ones, I found it hard to survive those years but as ever I was determined. Also at that time it was alright to be broke. Most of us were broke. I formed a folk band called ‘Dorothy’ and we performed the songs I had written. Simultaneously I continued the jazz gigs and loved the life within those performances. I really loved improvising. I loved the

9 Olwen Fouéré: An Irish actor, writer and director who works in English and French. Established Operating Theatre and worked with composer Roger Doyle. Has performed worldwide and is highly influential.

19 song-writing too but couldn’t see a way to make it work musically. We recorded the songs and tried to get them into radio stations but really I had no experience with this and I never followed through on the process. It was during this time that I began to develop a stronger political outlook on the world. I disagreed with my parents on nearly every issue. I was a torture. A feminist, with the war raging in the North, I was at every cockfight in the country. Volunteering became a big part of my life. I began teaching an older man how to read and write. I taught Traveller children reading and writing and I began campaigning in college for women’s right to choose, disseminating information on abortion. I attended various political discussions on campus, out demonstrating against the governmental attack on student grants, (financial assistance to students, known as the ‘grant’ system). My grand aunts saw me on the 6 o’clock RTÉ news, (Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the national public broadcaster and semi-state body) breaking through a police barricade and they were absolutely horrified. They rang my mother up and asked if I was a socialist and said it would have to stop! My poor parents, two people who hadn’t had the privilege of a college education. My father insisting that he had afforded me these notions. How right he was. Still I was having a ball, totally invigorated and so busy changing the world. Living with radicals and sharing my life with people who were and still are deeply committed to social change. I began to see how songs were shaping and changing my world and I began to perform at many radical benefits and concerts. I was listening more and more to the likes of Christy Moore and Nina Simone. I was hell bent on changing the world through demonstrating, protesting and singing these kinds of songs. In 1993 I emigrated to America on a ‘Morrison’ visa10. I had been there before working during the summer holidays so I was somewhat imbued with American culture even just from the TV programs. I loved it. I just loved every inch of that raging, pulsing New York City. I still do. Working three jobs; a

10 The Immigration Reform Act of 1990 (in America) created new opportunities for skilled workers and introduced the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery. It increased by 200,000 the total visas to be granted each year, and also saw a certain number allotted to applicants from countries that had been out of favour since the immigration reforms of 1965, including 48,000 specifically for the Irish. These visas soon became known as the Morrison visas, and their author’s name became synonymous with the new lives they granted to so many (“Irish America”, 2013).

20 waitress, a nanny and an editor of children’s science books at Scholastic, (an American multinational educational publishing company) I enrolled in Long Island University to study jazz where I managed to get a scholarship to pay for most of the fees. I continued my singing and piano studies. I also began to sing at Irish sessions. I ended up in a band called Atlantic Bridge playing with Fiona Doherty, Patricia Furlong and Brendan Dolan. I was also in a jazz quartet singing “Sliabh Geal gCua” to jazz chords and “Strange Fruit” in an Irish accent. I met Mick Moloney11 up in the Bronx at a festival and he introduced me to Seamus Egan12 and Winnie Horan13 and I was asked to come down to the Blarney Star to sing with them. I didn’t know who any of them were so I said “Yes, of course!” During all of this time I was very seriously committed to social change, my ‘work’ was really a means to fund the different campaigns I was on or running. I met Dorothy Bukantz and Mike Moroney, two lifelong friends very committed to social justice issues and also the Grady family from Ithaca NY and they also became lifelong supportive friends particularly in terms of social activism. Singing at various political meetings, fundraisers for prisoners, Irish gay rights with the alternative St. Patrick’s Day parade14. Concerts to raise money for political prisoners back home; marches to get Gerry Adams15 into

11 Mick Moloney: founding member of The Johnsons, banjo player, singer and folklorist. Artistic director for several major arts tours, including the Green Fields of America, an ensemble of Irish musicians, singers, and dancers which toured across the U.S. on several occasions. He has produced and performed on over seventy albums and acted as advisor for scores of festivals and concerts all over America. Moloney is the author of ‘Far from the Shamrock Shore: The story of Irish American History Through Song’ and ‘Across the Western Ocean: Songs of Leaving and Arriving. Moloney received a National Heritage Fellowship from the NEA in 1992. He is the Global Distinguished Professor of Music at NYU. 12 Seamus Egan: multi-instrumentalist musician and founding member of the Irish American band Solas 13 Winifred Horan: classically trained on the violin at the New England Conservatory in Boston she went on to play in Cherish the Ladies and was one of the founding member of the band Solas. 14 St. Patrick’s Day: originally a religious festival, now more of a cultural celebration of the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, held every year on the 17th of March. In N.Y there is an alternative parade which welcomes gay members. 15 Gerry Adams: leader of the political group Sinn Féin from 1983 to 2018, an Irish republican politician.

21 America; singing up in Albany to the Congress members and then later with Mick Moloney and others including President Mary Robinson (first female President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997) when the American School curriculum had been changed so as the truth around the Irish Famine was taught. I sang at the Burnt out Black Churches benefits with Bernadette Devlin. Hearing Bernadette Devlin16 was like hearing Ella Fitzgerald for me, life changing, I could never go back. No one is as clear and succinct and as politically honest as her, a woman who understands the Northern situation but refuses to give in to or to acquiesce to the powerful men on both sides and a female campaigner who has always been on the side of the vulnerable, the poor and the downtrodden. I was introduced to new American ideologies, The Black Panthers17, and I went to hear various other political speakers such as Michael Farrell18 who had enormous influence on my thinking. At this juncture in my life everything changed. I left college and gave up my waitressing job and Scholastic and I went on the road with the band called Solas, the Irish American band. I had to seriously ‘up-skill.’ My ears were now red from digesting ‘real’ traditional song. It was a tremendous stroke of luck for me that I fell into the lap of Solas at this point in my life. We set off on a whirlwind tour of the world. We were famous within the contemporary folk scene within a year. Mick Moloney again minding us all gave us our first gig in

16 Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin; born 23 April 1947), is an Irish Socialist and republican political activist. http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and- style/people/bernadette-mcaliskey-i-am-astounded-i-survived-i-made-mad-decisions- 1.2798293 17 In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence (soon after shortened to the Black Panther Party - BPP). The Panthers practiced militant self-defence of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community-based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working- class emancipation — a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and colour lines. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/ 18 Michael Farrell (born 1944) is a civil rights activist, writer and former leader of People's Democracy. He has been a senior solicitor for Free Legal Advice Centres, Dublin, a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. Publications include Northern Ireland: The Orange State. Pluto Press. 1976.

22 Georgetown University and there were 450 people there. He had given me enormous help up to this point by providing me with songs and directing me towards other singers like the gallant Jimmy Crowley.19 Jimmy Crowley was at the gig in Georgetown and he very gently guided me through the Irish traditional songs “Sliabh Geal gCua” and “Níl na Lá”. They were both so kind to me. Basically at the gig I nearly died somewhere between the feelings of terror and being totally high on life and being thrilled with the experience. Performance, that drug. Mick says at the end of it. “You’re off young Casey, ye are off!” Solas then recorded three albums (Solas, 1996) (Solas, 1997) (Solas, 1998) and I made a solo album with them in the space of 4 years (Casey, 1998). I was completely overwhelmed and thrilled with my life. I couldn’t believe my luck. We went from cars to vans to tour buses, from one gig to weekend gigs to two weekends to ten-week tours that took us all over America and then to Ireland, England, France and Japan. We would arrive at festivals and everyone would start running around. We had a lot of fun and it was exhilarating and illuminating in so many ways but it was also an extreme and exhausting learning curve. I could write reams here but I don’t know if it relates entirely to my core practice of singing as opposed to the music industry machinations. Much of this time has been documented by the CDs that we recorded and by the streams of press and reviews that we got. This energy and experiential learning did feed into my performances. In terms of my own personal musical framework at this point the man who instructed and helped me the most was Frank Harte20 the great singer and collector of Irish traditional song. I first met Frank in the Catskills Irish Arts

19 Jimmy Crowley: folksinger and collector, famous for singing in his own Cork accent and known for the songs “Johnny Jump-up” and “Salonika”. His collection of Cork songs, entitled Songs from the Beautiful City, was published by The Freestate Press in 2014. 20 Frank Harte, (1933- 2005) Traditional Irish singer, song collector, architect and lecturer. Frank had a profound influence on myself and many other Irish singers: namely Mick Moloney, Mary Black, Paul Brady, Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Len Graham, Niamh Parsons and countless others for his tremendous generosity in the transmission of Irish traditional song. He produced 10 albums of traditional song which are an invaluable resource not just for the songs but for the historical and social information in the booklets.

23 Week21 where we were both the singing instructors. It was 1995. He was wonderful. I can never impress on people enough the importance of Frank Harte in my life. I trusted him completely. Frank set me off on a pathway of songs that changed the course of my life. I went on to record and perform many songs that I learnt from Frank such as “Shamrock Shore”, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye”, “One I Love”, “Roger the Miller”, “Dunlavin Green”, “The Brown and Yellow Ale”, “The Song of Choice” and “The King’s Shilling”. In the later chapters I will look at this part of my practice and the impact Frank Harte and other musicians, such as Mick Moloney, Áine Uí Cheallaigh22, Niamh Dunne23, Sean Óg Graham24 and Maura O’Connell had on my performance. The other major person who has shaped my musical landscape has been my husband Niall Vallely. Without him I don’t believe I would be still singing. His continued love and support have held me up during the particularly difficult times that many performers live through. Artistically he is a wonderful exponent of the tradition and is “[t]he best concertina player in the world” (Living Tradition 2008). He is also a contemporary composer, a trumpet player and an avid listener to all kinds of music. So in many ways it makes sense that we found one another. He listens to such a wide varied mixture of musics. I have heard music that I would never have had access to without Niall, his own writing, knowledge and listening have been a great gift. His minding of our children when I am away is an obvious practical example of his support for me but his emotional support has been the deepest and most enriching and lasting

21 The Catskills Irish Arts Week: a festival of music, singing dance and crafts held every year in east Durham N.Y. 22 Áine Uí Cheallaigh: Sean-nós singer who won Comórtas na mBan and Corn Uí Riada at the Oireachtas in 1990 and the Corn Uí Riada again in 1992, she has sung in concerts with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, with Hugh Tinney and with Anúna. She sang in the first Riverdance show (1995), later in the musical The Pirate Queen in Chicago and on Broadway. Her recordings are Idir Dhá Chomhairle/In Two Minds (1995) and Binneas Thar Meon (2009) (Vallely, 2011, p. 706). 23 Niamh Dunne: Singer and fiddle player with the band Beoga. Produced a solo album entitled Portraits. Founding member of FairPlé and has played with Ed Sheeran on “Galway Girl”. 24 Sean Óg Graham. Guitarist and accordion player and founding member of the band Beoga. Much sought after session musician.

24 gift to our relationship. As a woman it’s unusual to be afforded the lifestyle and opportunity to tour as a professional musician, especially once you have children and this is still very much the case. This relationship has buoyed me through many of life’s experiences and I think it has had a profound effect on my practice and on my singing. The other person who had the most effect on my life and musical life was my mother. She was extraordinarily good to me, driving me to endless music lessons and competitions. Anne Casey also allowed me the life of a touring female performer by minding my children when I was away on the road. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. We were great old pals (Casey, 2016).

In drawing the key formative moments that have been highlighted in this section, there is ample evidence that musically my life has been very rich and extremely varied. From the love of performance inherited from my family to the more formal lessons from music teachers of the traditional and classical idioms in both voice and piano, combined then with the informal and formal learning in the jazz and folk worlds I gravitated towards a very eclectic style of performance. People and place have also had a profound impact on my thinking which is shaped and mirrored in my singing. People such as Frank Harte, and some of the other people mentioned above have made a deep and lasting impact on my singing, encouraging and supplying me with songs and moral support. I wouldn’t be who I am without them. Moving from the solid foundations of a local community in Ballyduff and emigrating as far as New York and back home again have also given me a world view which only further confirms my eclectic approach. I believe that music has the ability to connect people on a deeply emotional and communal level which can promote societal change and I value more and more how vital and important music is to our lives.

Arts Practice Research I conduct my research through an arts practice mode of inquiry. This type of inquiry or research has been emerging over the past three decades. “…in the last two to three decades the idea that arts practice might be a form of research has been developing ascendency” (Smith & Dean, 2009, p. 2).There are various titles used: arts based research, practice as research, practice led research and arts practice research. I use the

25 term arts practice research throughout the thesis as I think it best reflects my own artistic approach. Much of this work is emerging and innovative and other arts practice research that served as a model for my own investigations includes Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, Heewon Chang and Gaylene Perry (Bartleet, 2009) (Chang, 2008) (Perry, 2010). In recent years, knowledge has been garnered in the field of arts practice research in the University of Limerick. Breandán de Gallaí’s dissertation was particularly inspirational to my own practice (De Gallaí, 2013). I found his work brave and encouraging and importantly his open-minded approach to traditional dance and new choreography helped me to reframe my own work. In this section I tease out the issues and meanings behind this evolving and ‘revolutionary’ form of investigation and how it pertains to my own examination of my practice as a singer. "Practice as Research, PaR, involves a research project in which practice is a key method of inquiry” (Nelson, 2003, 8-9). Robin Nelson provides a robust defence for the adoption of practice as research PhDs within academia. Nelson explores the methodological approaches used in this form of research, which will be discussed later. The methods of inquiry, advocated by Nelson, into a PaR PhD are presented as an alternative to the dominant 'scientific method’ or the more traditional ways of acquiring knowledge established within the universities. He states “in respect of the arts, a practice, (creative writing, dance, musical score/performance, theatre/performance, visual exhibition, film or other cultural practice) is submitted as substantial evidence of a research inquiry" (Nelson, 2013, p. 9). Arts practice research started to emerge when schools of music and art colleges were subsumed into universities. “The Conservatoires were confronted by a broader set of ‘academic’ standards and regulatory frameworks which, being essentially word based (through publications in journal articles or books) did not readily accommodate studio practice” (Nelson, 2013, p. 12). “In the humanities, theory, criticism and historical investigation has been heavily prioritized over arts practice” (Smith & Dean, 2009, p. 2). Now recognized within academia “practice as research has become something of a methodological law unto itself; an activity that in its subversion of traditional research procedures and protocols is becoming creative researchers’ new tradition of choice” (Freeman, 2010, p. 35). Knowledge has been traditionally gathered in the western world and in third level institutions by utilizing the empirical and positivist approaches to research. Data from the research is presented as ‘objective truth’, substantiated by testing or analysing texts

26 in a numerical or verbal format, either agreeing or disagreeing with existing information and that then produces the thesis that defines new insights. Academic establishments have thrived in this fashion for centuries. Johnson works towards a theory of the imagination and how it provides meaning, understanding and reasoning to our experiences. Johnson questions the assumptions of ‘objectivism’ and its ‘God’s-Eye-View’ or what I paraphrase as ‘objective truths’ that have been continually upheld for centuries in Western philosophy which denies the central role played by the imagination in the constitution of rationality. Johnson deconstructs the arguments behind reducing reason to the rules of logic and argues for categorising imaginative structures of understanding through schemata, metaphor, and mental imagery. Johnson believes there is a crisis in continuing this unsubstantiated classical view of objectivism where ‘science’ produces genuine empirical knowledge involving logical structures of inference whose results can be tested against ‘theory-neutral objective’ data. His main opposition to this framework is that the human body and by extension human experiences are ignored in this process along with differing cultural viewpoints: The question is what makes us human? If it is the capacity that human beings have to reason, then we need to describe that capacity. It includes reasoning through the use of metaphors and other figurative structures; it is, indeed, one of the chief means we have of making sense of our experience (Johnson, 1974, p. 12).

“At the basis of the relationship between creative practice and research is the problematic nature of conventional definitions of ‘research’, which are underpinned by the fundamental philosophical quandary as to what constitutes ‘knowledge’” (Smith & Dean, 2009, p. 2). After the catastrophic events of World War II and with the political advances gained in the 1960s and the post-modern approach to philosophical thinking, the older established formats were shaken apart: …Western economic, political and intellectual hegemony were questioned after world War II. The perceived crisis of the era was as much about coming to terms with the colonial legacy inherent with many of our academic disciplines as about the interpretations and representations of cultural practices (Cooley & Barz, 2008, p. 11).

Questions were asked about the validity of ‘objective truth’. For starters, many of the lecturers were men and the academy had been forced to make room for women and for different voices who did not always agree with the de facto status quo. It was not their truth or their perspective of the world. “Many people in academe have built their

27 prestigious careers and statuses on the lives of people in far less privileged positions; this is highly problematic” (Quaye, 2007, p. 4). With the advancement of the civil rights movement in the 1960s the academies also had to provide a space for other voices: people of colour; women; poor people who now could access an education, (in Ireland free education was introduced in the republic in 1966 by Donagh O’Malley); immigrants in America. Stephen John Quaye, a Ghanaian/American graduate student writes an article from his own personal experiences navigating the challenges within more traditional research. He calls for academia to become more open-minded about underrepresented students. Social science, he argues is embedded in certain belief systems that have evolved over time; value systems could be extended to allow different methodologies and writing types to be used as research. Quaye backs this proposal up by using his own diaries, personal stories and poems alongside relevant literature to persuade the academic environment that this approach will illuminate his ‘home’ environment and help to overcome prejudice within academia. He states “I hate when people cannot be themselves in certain academic contexts, but I fear that this happens all too often for members of ‘oppressed’ groups (e.g. women and people of colour)” (Quaye, 2007, p. 2). He goes on to quote Valerie Janesick (2000): “The myth that research is objective in some way can no longer be taken seriously. At this point in time all researchers should be free to challenge prevailing myths such as this myth of objectivity” (p.385). These minority groups had a very different perspective and understanding of what knowledge or their own ‘absolute truth’ was and how it could be attained. Objectivity and its stand-alone epistemic currency were seriously being challenged. Artists also entered the fray here as many of the schools of music which survived outside of academia up to this point in time were amalgamated into universities in the 1970s. Graeme Sullivan from Australia states that in the late 1980s: ...art schools and teacher training colleges were absorbed within university structures…Although it was apparent that artists teach, a perplexing question arose about whether or not they did ‘research’ in their studios (Smith & Dean, 2009, p. 43).

The academies now had to figure out how to fit us, the artists in, and how to maintain the academic rigor that has sustained it for so long. There was bound to be some conflict and resistance, because it meant that academics had to facilitate this new influx of ideas that challenged their own backgrounds and the modus operandi to date.

28 For example, in Britain, Joseph states that “prior to the early 1980s the discourse of identity and the narratives of belonging in Black British cultural production were predominantly male narratives, foregrounding Black male subjectivity” (Phelan & Lane, 1998, p. 198). Professor Patricia Leavy is to the forefront of a new and ambitious methodological approach in arts-based research. Leavy has produced an extremely readable, practical guide to Arts Based Research (ABR) which she continually links back to qualitative methodology with exact and simple examples, thereby dispelling any myths around the “experimental” nature of ABR. Arts-based research advocated by Leavy might utilise art in practice but not necessarily in a specialist manner. The lines can be blurred here as her thinking comes out of the educational and social services pertaining to organised welfare efforts led by trained personnel. There is not a need to self-identify with the art form, whereas in arts practice research the practitioner has specialist knowledge and is deriving more knowledge from their practice. I loved her clear strong voice on issues of public scholarship and the need to open up the academy with less jargon-filled writings that are only viewed by academic peers. In this second edition she lends her voice to film and fiction-based research and adds online video links again making the case for interdisciplinary motivations to reflect the world we live in today and to help make knowledge accessible to all. This attainment of knowledge through creative practice is revolutionary in every aspect of its thinking; accepting new cultures and philosophies into the fold and constantly evolving as it grows. While women had been involved in traditional research for some time they were coming of age and demanding more senior and managerial roles within academia. For Marian Wright Edelman her mentors were all men and “this male dominance rings to many women in the professions, especially in academia” (Chang, 2008, p. 80). Fiona Candlin a PhD candidate, argues that if practice-based PhDs could be simply practice-based then artwork would be more clearly acknowledged as a valid form of intellectual inquiry. Seen in a more positive light, like conceptual and feminist art which were also initially rejected or criticised, she argues that this research could be an ‘opening up’ to different forms of knowledge and of practice. It offers different groups of people access to research and is changing recognition of what research is. She states that “practice-based PhDs may be new but art practice and doctoral study are most definitely not and candidates inherit all the associated artistic and academic

29 expectations”. This spurs us on to see the practice-based research as an “opportunity to critically reappraise academic territory” (Candlin, 2000, p.5). While arts practice research is now clearly an established canon of inquiry it is a fairly recent canon of thought in terms of academia, and it is still emerging. So, as stated above, it does throw up issues and concerns for some academics and there are challenges in presenting arts practice as research. This mode of inquiry has met with resistance along the way, not being wholly accepted or embraced by universities as evidencing established or enough epistemic rigor in traditional academia. A report headed by Christopher Frayling, the Rector of the Royal College of Art, which focused on practice-based doctorates and addresses fundamental questions around the form, subject matter, and critical knowledge gained through research methods, established that a “Major element of the (PhD) submission is an original creative work or words” (UK Council for Graduate Education, 1997, p. 7). It acknowledges the considerable variation in what constitutes an arts-based PhD. The report assumes that the submitted work must apply scientific methodology and it must contribute to knowledge as with the traditional PhD, as well as displaying a mastery of the subject itself. My research is an investigation into how the performance of the songs present my different creative strands, as an Irish woman, as a social activist and as a carrier of the tradition from the old into the new century. The challenge will be in applying rigorous arts practice methodological approaches to my practice. The other issues addressed or questioned in this UK report are: What is a practice-based doctorate for? What would the career purposes and opportunities be for the graduate? I do find that there is already a place within the academy for the ‘working or touring’ musician, but this tends to remain almost exclusively within the area of practical performance tuition. The expertise of the performer isn’t valued as highly as that of the academic, being seen more as vocational skill than intellectual capacity as evidenced by the difference in earnings. Nithikul Nimkulrat, author, researcher and creative artist accounts in her writing and/or documents her artistic process by further elaborating on the role of documentation during research. She teases out the definitions between practice-based and practice-led research. Nimkulrat also discusses how the two roles that of practitioner and researcher “will be played alternately” in her work as a fibre artist. “Practice-based research can be carried out freely for its own sake in order to produce

30 artefacts…on the contrary…practice-led research is conscious exploration with the knowledge involved in the making of the artefacts” (Nimkulrat, 2007, p. 2). Obviously I am learning when I collect songs and am reading the text. This is acknowledged by the academics and supported by the reams of academic books on songs texts and indeed songbooks themselves and collections. So the text and engagement with the song narrative is recognized as academic. My performances are also recognized as worthy subjects of research by other academics but what we are arguing for here is a recognition of the inherent intellectual value of the performances themselves. In fairness I agree that knowledge needs to be substantiated and I am not arguing for ‘knowing’ something being true because you ‘feel’ it is true but there are other somatic and phenomenological concerns here to be addressed. This includes knowledge that is acquired through the senses and the body and perhaps the unconscious attainment of knowledge can be passed on gesturally and experientially during a performance. Basically I am arguing that the expertise and knowledge that I have acquired through my practice and performance is of value and as valid as any academic paper where knowledge is accessed verbally or through numerical data. I am calling this experiential research. Thankfully we are making ground with arts practice research by challenging established traditional rigor and providing the world with a whole new innovative and creative way to access knowledge. “The turn to creative practice is one of the most exciting and revolutionary developments to occur in the university within the last two decades and is currently accelerating in influence” (Smith & Dean, 2009, p. 1).

Methodological approaches Because I am engaging in arts practice research, my own art of singing is the central method of my investigations. In order to utilise my singing for this inquiry I employed a variety of methodological approaches that will document the practice. I used my practice and performances; documentation in the form of journaling and self- narrative for reflection called auto-ethnography; semi-structured ethnographic interviewing; interrogating my own listening approaches in experiential research; data collection in the form of a questionnaire and a panel discussion; reflecting on archival data and videoing concerts as my methodological approaches to this research.

31 Auto-ethnography My primary method of investigation is auto-ethnography. Where this auto- ethnographic writing occurs in the text it will be indented. This writing assisted me greatly in stimulating and formulating conceptual ideas. Auto-ethnography is a form of storytelling that “transcends narration of self to engage in cultural analysis and interpretation” (Chang, 2008, p. 43). Chang goes on to describe auto-ethnography as “Writings that demonstrate an author’s explicit intention of bringing self to the surface as an object of description, analysis, and or interpretation” (Chang, 2008, p. 35). Coming from an anthropological background in education, Chang provides a very practical approach, in her writing exercises and appendices, to fieldwork and to gathering data: examining the data from herself; herself in relation to others; as well as from the conceptual framework of culture. Chang uses this data, collected from familial and day to day material in evidencing her practice, in the form of diaries, interviews and her ‘culture grams’. Her insights and sensitivities into cultural diversity and identity are very strong, thought-provoking and provide a strong narrative on these studies. Leading on from Chang’s idea of examining data in relation to myself and then to others including Frank Harte I made a Venn Diagram and placed myself on one side of it and Frank Harte on the other and found both the similarities and differences between an older male, nonprofessional traditional singer and a younger, female, professional singer. Frank spent an extraordinary amount of his time collecting songs and he amassed a vast song collection during his travels to England, America and around Ireland. I have spent a fair amount of time collecting songs but I really channelled my time with the songs into performance where the songs took me touring around the world. Frank was keen to impress upon people that he was not a professional singer and that this allowed him greater autonomy with his song choices. Although he described himself as being a nonprofessional singer he did make seven albums with commercial record companies and enjoyed much acclaim. We both drew from the tradition greatly and owe a lot to it and we both sang unaccompanied as well as with instrumental arrangements. I framed the songs more in a band setting whereas Frank was accompanied by one person. In mirroring Chang’s conceptual work again and broadening out to view the cultural framework I note that Frank and I spent considerable time discussing the historical and political implications of the songs within an Irish context. The fact that I was a female singing many songs that revered men was also discussed and it amused and somewhat appalled Frank when I changed the line in

32 the song “Shamrock Shore” from “and in harmony like brothers stand” to “and in harmony like sisters stand.” Later on I will talk in more detail about these issues.

Figure 1: Karan Casey/Frank Harte Venn Diagram

Auto-ethnography extends out from the ethnographic field of study. Ethnography is a social research method employed by anthropologists and sociologists. It is understood as a qualitative methodology primarily used in the social sciences and it describes human social phenomena based on field work. Ellis and Bochner define auto- ethnography as "autobiographies that self-consciously explore the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged self with cultural descriptions. mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation" (Ellis, et al., 2011, p. 742). Auto-ethnography is a form of qualitative inquiry that takes a more personal approach and explores and utilizes a more self-reflective style of writing that connects experiential personal stories out into a wider cultural, political and social understanding and meaning: Auto-ethnography…expands and opens up a wider lens on the world, eschewing rigid definitions of what constitute meaningful and useful research; this approach helps us understand how the kinds of people we claim, or are

33 perceived, to be, influence interpretation of what we study, how we study it, and what we say about our topic (Ellis, et al., 2011).

Auto-ethnographic writing can be difficult for some of the more conservative elements in academia to accept as a form of research. It is much the opposite of theory driven hypothesis-testing research methods that are based on positivist epistemology, or quantitative research. It rejects outright the ‘perceived’ binary oppositions between the researcher and the researched, or objectivity and subjectivity or process and product, self and others, art and science, and the personal versus the political. Writing an auto- ethnography has helped me to witness how my art evolves and to capture the deeply personal nature of my singing and song writing, identifying its expressions and agendas.

Narrative Inquiry Another form of documentation that has been helpful to me is narrative inquiry, placing myself alongside other singers and songwriters within the folk eco- system with a view to seeing how their personal engagement with their arts practice crosses over or mediates itself through cultural descriptions within the language and history of the songs. The songs themselves are a perfect medium for such reflections on my research. Narrative inquiry is understood by Clandinin and Connelly as: …a way of understanding experience. It is a collaboration between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus. An enquirer enters the matrix in the midst of living and telling, reliving and retelling, the stories of the experiences that make up people’s lives, both individual and social (Clandinin, 2001, p.20).

Clandinin and Connelly demonstrate in action how to conduct fieldwork, present data and findings from this type of narrative inquiry, namely ‘Storytelling.’ They align themselves with the teachings of John Dewey25, using his models to explore human experience in educational and social research. They account for and show us how research takes place in the practical stories that unfold during data collection and they note the tensions and lack of clarity during the process, highlighting the boundaries an

25 John Dewey: (1859-1952) American educational reformer, philosopher and psychologist who worked closely with Fredrick Matthias Alexander to explore the nature of experience particularly in the field of education. Associated with the philosophy of pragmatism he is thought to be one of the founding fathers of functional psychology.

34 inquirer would face internally and externally. They point to different forms of documentation: journaling, letter writing, conversation, research interviews, photographs and memory boxes. The main area where this idea of narrative inquiry impacted on my research was in the form of conversations, particularly with Niall Vallely. I did also utilise journaling as mentioned above and ethnographic interviews.

Interviews - ethnographic research In my lifetime I have had the great pleasure of knowing and meeting many folk and traditional musicians who I have gleaned information from, gathering songs, lore and historical facts behind the songs and sharing what I know myself in this process of the continued transmission of the tradition. These include Áine Uí Cheallaigh, Frank Harte, Mick Moloney, Niamh Dunne, Niall Vallely, and Sean Óg Graham to name but a few. I have conducted semi-structured ethnographic interviews with some of these people to witness if we share a comparable space that could shed some light on how my arts practice is growing. Ethnographic interviews are a type of qualitative research stemming from anthropological research that utilises directed one on one interviews. “Heyl (2001) defined ethnographic interviews as a method where there is an ongoing respectful relationship with interviewees characterized by “genuine exchange of views” (p.369) that elicits the meaning interviewees make of the world around them” (Stage & Manning, 2003, p. 36). Having borne this in mind my interviews were semi-structured, affording a balance between a structured interview and an open-ended one. In deciding who to interview I felt that Seán Óg Graham, Niall Vallely and Niamh Dunne would have a particularly good insight into my performances. I play with these musicians often and over a period of at least ten years. While I was concerned that perhaps they would feel compromised themselves by being interviewed about my own performance, I decided to emulate Csikzsentmihalyi’s advice “My priority was to keep the interview as close to a natural conversation as possible…Because I hoped to get genuine and reflective answers, I let the exchanges develop around the themes I was interested in, instead of forcing them into a mold” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 16). Once we got going the interviews flowed and we managed to conduct very informative conversations. Still, in speaking to some of those whom we have researched, we were assisted by the fact that several have become close friends over the years, and so both understood our work well and know us well enough to be able to speak (relatively) freely (Stock & Chiener, 2008, p. 120).

35

I concur with Glassie when he states that: The reason to study people, to order experience into ethnography…is to stimulate thought…My problem was to be scientific, compassionate and respectful; it was to create an ethnography strong enough to cause disquiet in my world, but gentle enough to cause no discomfort among the people I wrote about (Glassie, 1982, pp. 12-13).

I travelled up to Portglenone, Co. Antrim to interview Seán Óg Graham and Niamh Dunne. As mentioned I play with these musicians a lot and feel they have a deep understanding of my performances. I was struck with the fact that Niamh was slightly anxious as evidenced in the start of the interview when she asked, “so I hope I’m doing alright here?” (Dunne, 2019). To be honest I was slightly nervous as well but we managed to overcome this and as the conversation flowed the ideas came. In many ways it felt more like a chat than an interview by the end of it. This interview it has to be said was hampered somewhat by my not asking full questions and in listening back I was appalled at how inarticulate I was and learned greatly from this and tried to correct this in the following interviews. Niamh was far more articulate and clear thankfully, and spoke in full sentences. This put me in mind of Ó Laoire and his interviewing of his informants on Tory Island. I was very moved by his respect and candour towards his interviewees and also his honesty in describing his ‘dilemma’ with one of his informants who wanted to withdraw her song (Ó Laoire, 2005, p. 102). I thought this mirrored Glassie’s interaction with the people of Ballymenone and I wanted to continue this line of thinking and maintain this respectful attitude during my own interviews. “…ethnographic study [is]…more to engage in the task of understanding reality as it is constructed by other people” (Glassie, 1982, p. 263). Sean Óg and Niall both have very good sound engineering skills and they were able to set up the microphones which made the whole interviewing process much easier. I agree with Timothy J Cooley and definitely would advocate meeting the person in the flesh. Interrogating the interview style from the virtual world to the more old- fashioned approach of meeting the person and having answered numerous questionnaires and interviews myself over the years I feel more engaged and consistent when the interview is conducted in person. “I find live human interaction essential to my research” (Cooley & Barz, 2008, p. 102).

36 In many ways Seán Óg and Niamh confirmed a lot of my own thinking and supported my notions but they did articulate things differently which helped to shed light on my own practice. “Ethnography is interaction, collaboration” (Glassie, 1982, p. 14). In researching how interviews can be conducted I was also drawn to an article by Amelia Maciszewski. For this article Maciszewski interviewed over seventy women singers and musicians from different socio-economic backgrounds and various linguistic groups, some semi-retired, some retired. Some of the women taught music and some were still out performing. This rings very well with myself and with my interviewees as many of us are in the same positions socially and professionally. She chose six women from the community of musicians in North India from the Hindustani idiom, a musical style of the region to quote and reflect from. Maciszewski goes to great lengths to take insights and knowledge from the women’s professional musical lives and social placements by using the women’s own narratives and voices and states “Locating my work in the movement away from Western-centred ethnography, in which a scholar omnisciently reports ‘objective’ information” (Maciszewski, 2001, p. 139). She believes that in allowing the women to tell their own stories that this transmits great cultural knowledge and in that manner is an ‘act of advocacy’ for these women and women in general. This is how I would like to conduct my own interviews where the experiences of the participants are told and understood through their own narratives. Maciszewski also highlights the choices available to these women in terms of their class, their own embodiment of the music and how it became available to them, the national and political agendas of the time and their professional musical experiences. This also rings strongly with my own experience as Ireland like India was a colonised country and so many of the same themes emerge. I particularly liked how the music was attained or embodied and as vocalist Mira Banerjee says “I’ve been in vocal music from a very young age. My father was a great musician…So when he used to sing when I was little, my mother would lay me in my father’s lap while she did the housework” (Maciszewski, 2001, p. 142).

Archival research Another key tool utilized in ethnography and arts practice research is the use of archival records to study other similar singers in the ‘gene pool’ as a means of reflecting on my own identity. I will be looking at data collected from my interviews or ‘chats’

37 with Frank Harte. I had the great privilege of meeting, collecting and learning songs from Frank for a ten-year period from 1995 to 2005. I want to stress that I didn’t frame this as ethnographic fieldwork at the time. I did seek Frank out and travelled up to Dublin to record him a couple of times a year and we met at various festivals. We also had many conversations on the phone over this period and he would often sing me songs over the phone or recite his beloved Yeats poems. Many of these conversations centred around the songs I was singing and recording. He was an invaluable reference source and when I wasn’t sure of the words or a certain version of a song I would ring him up. This formed an initiation into the world of traditional song and singing and established a ten-year relationship that became much deeper than any song collecting exercise. Frank would introduce me to people, for instance in the Góilín singer’s club26, and I understood subconsciously that his introduction was important within this community. I was not the only one who was calling on him, he was tremendously generous with his time if he thought that person was genuinely interested in traditional song. As Christy Moore states: He was utterly generous with his vast repertoire. How often have I checked my phone messages to find Frank singing some verse I had been seeking. Sometimes he would call me just to hear a bit of a song down the phone (Moore, 2005).

With this archival data I will be reflecting on the relationship between singers, the transmission of the tradition and how my performance of many of the same songs differed from his. As noted in my auto-ethnographic section earlier in this chapter it is hard to impress upon people how much Frank changed the course of my life. I loved him dearly.

Fiction-based research Having written a ‘fiction-based’ (Leavy, 2010) account of one of my meetings with Frank Harte I am hoping that this more creative approach to research will do more to evoke an understanding of our relationship and how important it was to me. I will include an extract from this in an appendix. Standing alongside the traditional ethnography reporting, i.e. transcribing the interviews, this is a more evocative and

26 An Góilín is a traditional singer's club based in Dublin, Ireland. They organise the Frank Harte Festival every September (An Góilín, n.d.).

38 provocative piece to help substantiate my research and to locate and cite fiction-based research as a qualitative methodological arts practice approach. Leavy makes the case for hybrid approaches to research stating with “…roots in both anthropology and musicology… ethnomusicology involves the study of musics in other cultures” (Leavy, 2010, p. 125). Leavy further qualifies the fiction-based research approach by stating “I have come to learn the deep value of fiction for being truthful, for giving shape to our research, and as a highly effective pedagogical tool” (Leavy, 2016, p. 5). This mirrors strongly my own approach to song writing and creative writing. I did write over 60,000 words of a novel during this period having been spurred on by the research to examine my past and in particular the lives of my great grandparents Paki Ryan and Agnes O’Dwyer and the possible familial relationship to the songs “Eamon an Chnoic” and “Seán Ó Duibhir a’ Ghleanna”. Perry in the act of her creative writing gained knowledge on personal empowerment, and it was for her the site of her research work. It caused her to reflect on the instability of boundaries between fictive and autobiographical practices and “the empowerment that (she) gains appears to reside in the imaginative work that I do as a writer” (Perry, 2010, p. 35). This thinking came to the fore in my second performance I Walked into My Head. In reflecting on my creative writing about Frank I’m reminded of his importance to my musical development.

Performances The other main methodological approach was examining my performances, a key tool in arts practice which constitutes the core data of this thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 involve an intensive interrogation of the two performances. Chapter 3 focuses on my first performance of traditional, folk and self-composed songs with my band at Dolan’s of Limerick. In Chapter 4 I concentrate on my second performance entitled I Walked into My Head. This performance was a radical new departure for me involving song- poems, sound design, piano playing and movement as well as newly-composed and traditional songs.

Experiential research Drawing from my strengths and experiential wisdom as a professional singer for over twenty-two years I want to make the case for experiential research, and particularly emphasise the skills of attention and listening. “Attention shapes the self, and is in turn shaped by it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 34). I believe this to be research

39 and wish to substantiate it as such. Much of my performance is fuelled by my experiences. In fact, I could argue all of it is drawing from the well of my body and spirit. But this expertise has been ‘scaffolded’ together from many experiences, listening being a key methodological approach: …listening and dancing to music around the kitchen, listening and rehearing the songs, listening and transcribing, listening and learning different versions of the songs, listening to the birds and the land and being inspired to write a song, paying attention being a key factor in this endeavour. Listening to the piano and the chords, listening to the atmosphere the chords create, feeling the atmosphere, breathing it in. Or paying attention in a rehearsal, listening again, listening during a performance, checking the key, falling into the rhythm of the guitar player, falling into the footfall of the metre within the words, falling into the atmosphere created during the performance. Listening for the musicians’ reaction, listening for the audience’s reaction. Listening to my heart beat during a gig that I attend, feeling my heart flutter when the music steps down gently upon my soul (Casey, 2019).

Bibliographic research and outputs Finally, I will write articles on the findings of my research creating a research output. I was inspired by Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and her writing approach in a journal article entitled ‘Behind the Baton: Exploring Auto-ethnographic Writing in a Musical Context’. Bartleet, the conductor in the Queensland Conservatorium, writes in a very evocative narrative style on how her experiences as a female conductor ‘play out’ during the actual creative process of conducting: during rehearsals, performing and the in-between times. Bartleet manages to convey with great personal honesty how she juggles and straddles the art forms of auto-ethnographic writing and conducting. She “…(began) thinking more deeply about (her) position and asking bigger questions about the musical, performative, relational and embodied nature of the experiences (she) was having” (Bartleet, 2009, p. 715). Her engaging descriptions of her own reflections and introspection vividly display the struggles one undergoes by virtue of being a female conductor at such a young age in a predominately male arena and so broadens out to discuss the profession of conducting through the practice of music-making and meaning eventually finding

40 that “The key to understanding my approach to auto-ethnography and conducting lies in the relationships I share with my musicians” (Bartleet, 2009, p. 721). She discusses the difficulties that auto-ethnographic writing brings up and how this is sometimes painful, not always flattering things about yourself appear and it is difficult to face this and the temptation might be there to leave this data out. But she perseveres and believes that it will help other musicians who want to grow to show her own vulnerabilities and to discuss them and hopefully grow and recover from them and then to move on: I later came to see conductors as men with foreign accents, who wore turtleneck tops with their sleeves rolled up…I still saw conductors as larger-than-life men (Bartleet, 2009, p. 714).

For myself this refreshing and accessible honesty in both the writing and the truth really rang out. I would love if my own writing and singing could ring as clearly and succinctly.

Theoretical Underpinnings In interrogating my performances and engaging in the critical auto- ethnographic explanation of my art I will need to define the term performance. Performance, that elusive, intangible, ephemeral thing that is so difficult to capture or contain, yet this I feel is why we admire, adore, need and love it so. In my opinion, performance continues to be a deeply held communal and connective vein which runs through our societies. The revered art of performance, enriching and life-giving experiential force has been sacred to many societies for centuries and as Schechner states: “exists in every known culture at all times” (Schechner, 1988, p. 7). In 1988 Richard Schechner, the foremost thinker and lecturer in the development of the field of Performance Studies at N.Y.U. wrote his seminal book Performance Theory which challenged greatly our broad perceptions around performance. In this book he examined the emerging ideas in the field. He demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of the ever evolving theories, looking at anthropology, theatre, music, dance and ritual alongside everyday-life performance, play and shamanism. He described how many timeframes and cultures are used to discuss human’s never-ending love of performances. He stated that “performance was an inclusive category that included play, games, sports performance in everyday life”

41 (Phelan & Lane, 1998, pp. 357-358). He also witnessed that “[he] taught courses in ritual, using anthropological thinking” (Phelan & Lane, 1998, p. 358). Later Schechner asks: Is performance studies a ‘field,’ an ‘area,’ a ‘discipline’? The sidewinder snake moves across the desert floor by contracting and extending itself in a sideways motion. Wherever this beautiful rattlesnake points, it is not going there. Such (in)direction is characteristic of performance studies. This area/field/discipline often plays at what it is not, tricking those who want to fix it, alarming some, amusing others, astounding a few as it side-winds its way across the deserts of academia (Phelan & Lane, 1998, p. 357).

Schechner continually asserts the right of the University to NOT define what Performance Studies is as by its very nature it is fluid, absorbing new ideas and people as in Peggy Phelan and gender studies. This particularly resonated with my own understanding of performance as I often advance and retreat gathering new ideas as I go along or indeed ‘making it up’ as I blunder through or tread carefully. Sometimes I feel like a magpie. Until recently in Western culture, performances were only thought of in terms of theatre, music and dance, nowadays though these boundaries are blurred and we have moved into mixed-media, happenings, and performance art. Another foundational text in performance studies is from Barthes who asks who decides what constitutes a written text, the author the critic or the reader? He argues that in order for the reader to become the central person or “destination” of the written text the author has “to die.” Again Barthes is posing fundamental questions about the role of performance in our societies. “In ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ the mastery of the narrative code may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’” (Barthes, 1977, p. 143). In terms of my own singing, I would ask who is judging the importance of the performance: myself as the singer; the song tradition or community; the musicians or the audience? In my arts practice as a carrier of Irish song, I will be looking at how the song texts are given meaning and ‘life’ through performance. There is, I find from my own experiential knowledge, a deep suspicion among performers, that if we control or contain or analyse too much the area of performance we will somehow lose the ‘magic’ of it. This issue will be examined further in this paper but it is a core philosophical question for myself. I am arguing that my performance and the experiential knowledge I

42 have gained through performance is insightful and covers new ground and this can be brought to light in performance. The main philosophical and contextual texts that I will be drawing on are Angela Davis’s Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998) and Tríona Ní Shíocháin’s Singing Ideas (2018), while also drawing on Mihalyi Csikzsentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990): and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1996). Much of my thinking during this research started to focus on the performance of social justice. The concept of social justice could have merited a PhD in its own right and it is beyond the scope of this thesis to explore the theories involved. I am using the term in a general sense to describe how the benefits and burdens of society are distributed and how our civil liberties and basic human rights are legislated for. What is of particular importance to me is how these ideas and experiences are interpreted and channelled through my art. Social activism, for the purposes of this thesis is defined as the promotion of social, economic and political reform. My own social activism is defined by advocating through song for issues as diverse as equality for women, an end to colonialism and for the equal distribution of wealth. Again it is beyond the scope of this thesis to engage with theories such as social movement theory and I decided to frame my research around my performances. Social justice and social activism often overlaps with my feminist activism. I use the term feminism to denote campaigning for women’s equality and rights. Theorists that I could have explored more were de Beauvoir, Wolf and Judith Butler and I would in the future relish further research in these areas (de Beauvoir, 2009) (Butler, 1990). I do delve into my own social and feminist activism in chapters 3 and 4. Many of the songs I sing are for the promotion of social justice issues that are important to me. Songs such as “The King’s Shilling”, “Hollis Brown”, “The Rocks of Bawn”, “The Ballad of Accounting”, “Eppie Morrie”, “She is like a Swallow”, “I’m Still Standing Here” and “The Song of Choice” to name but a few. Through the writings of Angela Davis, Tríona Ní Shíocháin and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi I began to interrogate whether my performances constituted the performance of social justice or whether they were an effort in consciousness raising or both and whether a connection was made with the audience on these matters. Davis’s work on the songs and singing of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, and the atmosphere they created with their

43 performances resonated deeply with me. Defining the protest of social justice within the arts Davis states that: … in order for protest to acquire an explicitly political character, there must be an organised political structure capable of functioning as a channel for transforming individual complaint into effective collective protest. At the same time social protest can never be made the exclusive or limiting function of art. Art may encourage a critical attitude and urge its audience to challenge social conditions, but it cannot establish the terrain of protest by itself. In the absence of a popular mass movement, it can only encourage a critical attitude. When the blues ‘name’ the problems the community wants to overcome, they help create the emotional conditions for protest, but do not and could not, of themselves, constitute social protest (Davis, 1998, p. 113).

Davis27 is working from a position where social protest to her is a very active, strong and at times militant action. I want to build on her arguments but as an arts practice researcher and as a singer I am arguing that singing songs to encourage social consciousness or raise awareness around issues is in and of itself the performance of social justice. I was very taken with a lecture on Máire Bhuí Ní Laoire given by Tríona Ní Shíocháin in University College Cork in 2017 and subsequently with her book Singing Ideas (2018). Tríona explored how Máire as a female poet in the early 19th century singing her political Irish language songs not only promoted political and social change but through her performances created a potent political experience. I would concur with her contention that: Song symbolizes and actualizes as in-between liminal experience, a period of symbolic antistructure, in which society can be challenged and the social hierarchy temporarily suspended, in which the unspeakable can become singable and the unthinkable thinkable (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 23).

Another important voice for me in this research was Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his brilliant book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990). His ideas on the phenomenological conscious attainment of happiness attained through concentrating on manageable but challenging tasks led to his research and concepts around Flow and positive psychology. “This representation of consciousness is phenomenological in that it deals directly with events—phenomena—as we experience and interpret them”

27 Angela Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness department is a feminist activist and was a member of the Communist Party until 1991 and also a member of Black Panther Party. She was prosecuted for three capital felonies but was acquitted of the charges.

44 (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, pp. 25-26). This introduction to some ideas around phenomenology and consciousness also intrigued me and drew me to questions arising from the concepts of embodied knowledge. He goes on to state that “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness” (pp. 25-26). I will examine this in more detail and in relation to my creative process in chapter 3. Other philosophical sub themes that came through in the research were from this revolutionary and exciting idea that the arts practice approach can be viewed as a ‘third choice’ or a new manner of investigative research. Stressing the importance of the scope of the ‘embodied mind,’ or ‘embodied cognition’ has been lent credence by academics such as Johnson and Lakoff. While this is not one of the main concerns of this thesis I do refer to these ideas later in chapter 3 and I use their writing on embodiment to support the embodied dimension of the arts practice approach. In a chapter entitled ‘The Third Choice: An Experientialist Synthesis,’ Lakoff and Johnson state: What we are offering in the experientialist account of understanding and truth is an alternative which denies that subjectivity and objectivity are our only choices. We reject the objectivist view that there is absolute and unconditional truth without adopting the subjectivist alternative of truth as obtainable only through the imagination, unconstrained by external circumstances. The reason we have focussed so much on metaphor is that it unites reason and imagination. Reason, at the very least, involves categorization, entailment and inference. Imagination, in one of its many aspects, involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing – what we have called metaphorical thought… Metaphor is thus imaginative rationality (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 193).

In my argument that new knowledge can be found in the embodied experiential locus of my performances I also draw on some texts on phenomenology. Phenomenology is a philosophical investigation and other readings include those of Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, who wrote The Phenomenological Mind in 2008 which is primarily a philosophical study of the mind as seen through the science of Phenomenology. By its very nature the mind bleeds into many disciplinary areas so The Phenomenological Mind provides an introduction to the key concepts in phenomenology and how they are viewed within the cognitive sciences - psychology, brain science, artificial intelligence and mind philosophy - asking questions on the temporal aspects of consciousness. Zahavi and Gallagher examine consciousness through perception and action and probe questions on intentionality and the embodied mind making a case for the extended minds being used in all areas of expertise through phenomenology. They state that “Phenomenology is concerned with attaining an

45 understanding and proper description of the experiential structure of our mental/embodied life;” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 9). For myself and the arts practice approach to my singing this is exactly what I need to do: understand and give a ‘proper’ or detailed description of my performances, my embodied and mental landscape and how it is experienced in performance, to gain access to new knowledge of why I sing the songs I sing. Richard Shusterman in his Body Consciousness examines the different approaches to somatic study of the body or what he calls ‘somaesthetics’: “the critical meliorative study of one’s experience and use of one’s body as a locus of sensory- aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning” (Shusterman, 2008, p. 19). Of particular interest to myself was chapter 3 where he discusses Simone de Beauvoir28. He states that “Beauvoir shows how the distinctive bodily differences of women and old people are perceived as negatively marked in terms of social power that reflects society’s male dominance” (Shusterman, 2008, pp. 77-78).

Conclusion In drawing all of these strands together my thesis is investigating being an Irish female folk singer and furthering an exploration of that creative voice. Most of my influences came together in my life as a solo artist when I employed all of the skills I had learned and drew them together for the performances. For much of my childhood I was exposed to classical piano and voice, semi-classical choir arrangements of hymns and more ‘modern’ church songs, folk and traditional songs and tunes and disco dancing to American soul and pop. Alongside my poems and song-writing this eclectic approach to music became a huge part of my own vision in my later performances. As I grew older these main artistic strands of traditional Irish music, folk, jazz and creative writing became more confirmed in my performances. This brings me to a rather eclectic style of performance. But in looking at my performances nowadays and taking a broader angle view as a researcher I have created some distance and ask how the cultural and political performance of social justice issues and my song writing and creative process combines to bring a life force to the performance.

28 Simone de Beauvoir one of France’s foremost philosophical original thinkers of the 20th Century. Famous for her influential The Second Sex (1949) and its challenges to male dominance in the world.

46 I advocate a ‘third choice’ methodological approach to my research. Ideas emerge during my practice and also during performances and I grapple to examine and explain them. As one of my PhD classmates mused “there is no recipe for a performance” (Jaber, 2017). Therefore I argue for a research pattern that uses the best of the traditional more empirical style of research, the ‘objectivist’ viewpoint, in the ethnographic data collected from interviews, archival data, a questionnaire and panel discussions, alongside the post-modern ‘subjectivist’ approach, that considers the personal and cultural viewpoint of the researcher, that allows for my own auto- ethnographic reflections but that brings together these strands and also allows for a somatic dimension where the body and the senses and the unconscious are afforded an intelligence. This will be underpinned theoretically by philosophical concerns that allow for the somatic discussion to support the experiential sciences of unconscious knowledge. I use the term arts practice research throughout the thesis as I think it best reflects my own artistic approach. The methodological approaches utilised in this PhD thesis are based primarily on my practice, my auto-ethnographic writings, documentation in the form of audio-visual recordings, key insights and input from a panel discussion and a questionnaire and finally ethnographic interviews from other musicians. The next chapter is a contextual review of some of the key issues that are emerging from this study so far. I look at the terms folk and Irish traditional and move to texts that analyse and aim to define these singing styles more succinctly. But for the most part I investigate my own creative song texts and performances to demonstrate the elements that qualify my beliefs and distinguish more the creative strands, looking in more detail at the essential identifiers of a creative Irish female folk singer.

47 Chapter 2: Irish Traditional and Folk Song

“the oral song avid as superstition layered like an amber in the wreck of language and the remnants of a nation.” Eavan Boland (Boland, 2011, p. 82).

In chapter 2 I review the literature on Irish traditional and folk song, writing a brief historical overview of Irish traditional song itself. I specifically explore the origins of political folk song as it forms a central part of my repertoire. To explore the actual singing of Irish traditional and folk song, I examine my own creative process through my singing of two songs, “The Rocks of Bawn” and “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”. Utilizing the arts practice methodological approach of documentation, I have included audio visual recordings of these two songs from my first PhD performance, to explore even further how performativity, orality, arrangement and the reworking of the songs is deeply embedded in my creative process. I have contextualised my understanding of traditional and folk song, drawing on texts such as Williams and Ó Laoire (2011), Moloney (2016), Ní Shíocháin (2018), Shields (1993), Vallely (2011), Lord (1960), Ó Tuama and Kinsella (1981), Motherway (2013) and Glassie (1982). Continuing the line of thought from the first chapter I gather data from my auto-ethnographic journal to document the process of performance. I look at some of the semi-structured ethnographic interviews I conducted with other musicians during my research and use some of the archival data that I collected from Frank Harte, who was my mentor for ten years, in order to qualify my research. To substantiate and situate my work among other writings on traditional and folk song scholarship I want to give a short overview of some texts in this field. These include self-accounts, autobiographies, song collections, memoirs, biographies, and academic texts. While I have utilized many of these and read most during my formative years of gathering songs not all have been quoted in this thesis. These texts are invaluable and give a deep insight into the power of folk and traditional song. Some of the most influential texts for me have been the CD booklets accompanying the Frank Harte albums such as 1798: The First Year of Liberty and The Hungry Voice (Harte, 1998) (Harte, 2004). Extraordinary scholarship is present in the detailing of the songs alongside their political and historical meaning. They are deeply provocative and

48 emotive in their accounts and in their use of other supportive texts such as poetry, posters, paintings, pamphlets and letters of the times. This adds tremendous weight to their contribution to knowledge. For instance in the album about the Irish famine The Hungry Voice, Frank states: I believe that along with the poets, we the singers, in some small measure, speak for those whose hungry voices were never heard back then, one hundred and fifty years ago. We speak not for the sterilised statistics of that time, but of the horror, the hardship, and the loneliness of those millions who died or emigrated (Harte, 2004).

Autobiographies and self-accounts by singers are invaluable as they can be illuminating to students, song collectors, singers and listeners alike, giving insider information behind the songs, expertise around locality and perhaps more importantly the reasons for singing particular songs. Some prominent examples include books by Christy Moore, Tommy Sands, Joan Baez and Paddy Tunney (Moore, 2000) (Baez, 1987) (Tunney, 1991). There are many examples of song collections which have been useful to me both as a performer and researcher. They include The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Sam Henry’s Songs of the People, The Age of Revolution in the Irish Song Tradition 1776 to 1815 as well as collections by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl (Ó Cróinín, 2000) (Moylan, 2000) (Seeger, 1998) (Seeger, 2001). Other scholarly work in the area of Irish traditional song studies includes Songs of Irish Rebellion, A Hidden Ulster: People, songs and traditions of Oriel and The Indignant Muse: Poetry and Songs of the Irish Revolution 1887-1926 (Ní Uallacháin, 2003) (Moylan, 2016). I really like the song choices within Cas Amhrán by Mícheál Ó hEidhin (Ó hEidhin, 1975). Songbooks relating to place include those by Jimmy Crowley, Hugh Shields, Len Graham and Dermot Power (Crowley, 2014 ) (Shields, 1981) (Graham, 2010) (Power, 1996). Other relevant writings would include those from the University of Limerick by Carrie Dike, Mary McLaughlin and Éamon Costello (Dike, 2017) (McLaughlin, 2018) (Costello, 2015). Elsewhere in the thesis I have mentioned the importance of various singers, such as Frank Harte, Dolores Keane, Maura O’Connell, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, Mary Black, Áine Uí Cheallaigh, Mick Moloney, Dick Gaughan and Christy Moore, other singers and recordings that I have found particularly significant and influential are those by Iarla Ó Lionáird, Anne Mulqueen, Peggy Seeger, Karen Matheson, Mary Coughlan, Moya Brennan from Clannad, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Betty Carter, Bobby McFerrin,

49 Jon Hendricks, Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Odetta and Ella Fitzgerald. (See discography for details)

Irish traditional and folk song There are different interpretations and definitions of the terms, folk and traditional, and how they are used and there is no complete definition as it depends on who is using them. This can be confusing but there is a general understanding between the different approaches. Often in everyday use the terms folk and traditional are interchangeable as indeed are the concepts of song and singing. It is nigh on impossible to separate them all out but I will attempt to tease out a general understanding of the implications of these terms, as evidenced through my singing. Fintan Vallely’s Companion to Irish Traditional Music which includes a comprehensive overview of Irish song states that “Irish traditional music has a rich variety of song, much of which shares the same underlying stylistic features. It can be first separated by language – that in Irish and that in English and a class in between” (Vallely, 2011, p. 625). Motherway states that “An inclusive classification of Irish traditional song performance should include five different performance genres” and she goes on to divide them into “Irish traditional singing in the local vernacular (including Irish, Hiberno-English, Ulster-scots, Yola and Shelta languages), Anglo-Irish song (often referred to as parlour music), ballad singing (as associated with the Folk revival), country ’n’ Irish, and contemporary hybrid forms” (Motherway, 2013, p. 16). The latter category includes contemporary folk singing which is where I am situated but I would argue that much of my singing has been informed by many of the above definitions. Many of the tendencies from these singing styles and repertoires have influenced folk singers. Many singers sing in the primary two languages of Ireland, Irish and English. As Tomás Ó Canainn describes in Traditional Music of Ireland, “the adjective traditional implies that the music is being passed from one generation of performers to the next” (Ó Canainn, 1978, p. 1). A traditional singer in Ireland is frequently defined as someone who is a carrier of songs that have been passed onto him or her orally, often within a familial framework. Resulting from the oral process of transmission, inherent in this practice is a recreation of the old music to the new. Hence orality and performativity are an enormous part of the tradition (Ní Shíocháin, 2018) (Lord, 1960).

50 Personally I view different but deeply connected traits or characteristics within the context of traditional Irish song. Irish traditional song to me includes the traditional English language and Irish language songs. Both of the languages can be sung in the sean-nós style of singing. Sean-nós is often but not always sung in the Irish language and also includes the macaronic songs with a bilingual text. Tomás Ó Canainn describes sean-nós singing as “a rather complex way of singing in Gaelic, confined mainly to some areas in the west and south of the country. It is unaccompanied and has a highly ornamented melodic line” (Ó Canainn, 1978, p. 30). He goes on to state that it “…is a solo art in which words and music are equally vital. The language is of course, Irish and the sean-nós is only completely at ease...in an Irish speaking situation where the singer and his listener are in real communication” (Ó Canainn, 1978, p. 49). It should be noted that sean-nós is “a singing style” (Mac Con Iomaire, 2011). Both Ó Bróithe and Ó Canainn attest to the necessity of knowing the older songs for a deeper understanding of traditional singing. “It is the author’s belief that no aspect of Irish music can be fully understood without a deep appreciation of sean-nós singing” (Ó Canainn, 1978, p. 49). Ó Bróithe states that “this makes understanding of the Gaelic metre and rhyming conventions essential for the authentic performance or appreciation of Irish folk song, or for the competent instrumental rendition of song melodies” (Ó Bróithe, 2011, p. 626). As I said earlier these terms folk and traditional are often interchangeable, Breathnach for example describes folk music as music that: Includes not only the older songs and melodies of the Gael, which are undoubtedly our most precious heritage, but also the Anglo-Irish and English ballads of the countryside and the extraordinary rich vein of dance music which belongs exclusively neither to Gaeltacht or Galltacht (Breathnach, 1971, p. 2).

This is confusing the issue though, as he is referring to folk music in the same way I would use the term traditional music. Vallely states that “None of this definition [of folk and traditional music] can be taken as indicating a rigid category however, for the same words can be used to describe material which folk per se might wish to exclude” (Vallely, 2011, p. 282). Folk is often a broader or umbrella term for music in Ireland. These are questions of perception and they are not clear cut. The academics and the musicians and the general public may all use these terms differently. “In Ireland the

51 term ‘traditional’ is used in place of ‘folk’. This, the ITMA29 considers, emphasises transmission rather than origin and circulation” (Vallely, 2011, p. 281). Folk for me often denotes the use of more modern and composed songs with named authors. For example, “Distant Shore”, “Hollis Brown” and “The King’s Shilling”, are folk songs from my repertoire, perhaps I feel that because they were written recently and by people outside of Ireland? It should be stated that traditional songs were composed by individuals also. Is the “Boys of Barr Na Sráide” a folk song when Christy Moore sings it but a traditional song when Niamh Parsons30 performs it? There is an historical perception to take on board as well for at different times these terms have denoted different things. Folk music at times in the past is the term used to describe all of this music, for example Shield’s Shamrock Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (Shields, 1981). Other examples of the use of the term folk music in the public sphere include the naming of festivals: The Cork Folk Festival and the Lisdoonvarna Folk Festival perhaps utilizing the term folk to describe a broader church of music. Other uses of the term may be The Folk Music Society of Ireland which was established to “encourage an informed interest in traditional music, to preserve this music and to sustain its traditions and to promote the study of traditional music” (Vallely, 2011, p. 282). There also seems to be lingering in the air something that doesn’t allow us to call traditional songs, folk songs? I would call “Ailliliú na Gamhna” a traditional song, likewise “Shamrock Shore”, maybe this is to do with the passing of time. Is it the case that I’m seeing folk music as contemporary music and in the past the term folk music was used to signal traditional music? The use of the term folk music often implies accompanied song, as in the music of Andy Irvine, the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers. This issue of the differences between perceptions of folk and traditional came up in the interview with Niamh Dunne where she pointed out the centrality of instrumental tunes to traditional music: Karan: …do you think there's a slight difference in the traditional and folk element here…?

29 Irish Traditional Music Archive 30 Niamh Parsons: renowned traditional singer from Dublin formerly member of the band Arcady

52 Niamh: As opposed to a traditional gig…Well interestingly I think a lot of it, I might not be right about this but I've always had a suspicion that in terms of the trad world the tunes tend to come first a little bit…in terms of a gig you know “put in a set of reels there now”. And cheer everybody up…So I think folk music is more inclined to be about songs whereas trad gigs are more inclined to be about tunes (Dunne, 2019).

American Folk Singing In the 1950s and 60s there was an explosion of interest in folk music in America. American folk singers of this era often had a strong political message and indeed were seen as the carriers of the “songs of the people.” American folk music of this era was often imbued with a sense of social activism and was particularly influenced by the civil rights movement. “Activists reinvented traditional music as a political force by interpreting it as a depository of the “people or the “folk”, and as providing an alternative to manufactured, mass-mediated forms of cultural expression” (Eyerman & Barretta, 1996, p. 501). Some of the popular singers included Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Odetta and Judy Collins. They represented alert and political voices arising from the political turmoil of the 1960s. Many of the people named sang both traditional and folk songs. There was a lot of cross-fertilization between Irish and American singers in this period. For example, Bob Dylan was deeply impressed by the music of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem: “What I was hearing pretty regularly, though, were rebellion songs and those really moved me. The Clancy brothers – Tom, Paddy, Liam – and their buddy Tommy Makem sang them all the time” (Dylan, 2004, p. 83).

Conversely Irish singers like Mick Moloney in The Johnsons, Christy Moore, and Andy Irvine in Planxty were heavily influenced by the American folk music of the time. I was greatly influenced by these brave artists and set out to emulate their politics and singing by becoming a folk singer.

While I grew up singing traditional material when I was young, we didn’t sing many traditional songs at home. Our household held many parties and gatherings and we sang in the car on trips, my father and uncle Don both being fine singers, this became our entertainment for the road. It didn’t matter where the song came from as long as we could sing it. At home we sang parlour songs,

53 hits, anything from “The Old Bog Road”, “This is the way to Amarillo”, “Lay the Blanket on the Ground” to “Danny Boy”. Growing up and not making a distinction between the different genres or sub-genres allowed me to grow and nurture my own creativity. As a young person growing up in Ireland I didn’t make too much of a distinction between Mary Black and Nioclás Toibín. I just emulated what they sang and learned it off. In saying this, learning the songs of Nioclás Toibín was much more difficult and took much more effort and time because of the Irish language and sophisticated ornamentation that was new to me at the age of 11 (Casey, 2016).

The dominant thread through Irish singing is a gathering of songs from a broad range of sources and then singing them your own way. Examples abound, from Maura O’Connell, Christy Moore, Mick Moloney to Mary Black. As Maura O’Connell says when someone asks her what kind of songs she sings, she says “I sing good songs” (O'Connell, 2018). And Tommy Makem speaking of his mother, renowned traditional singer Sarah Makem said “She wouldn’t know a folk song from a hole in the ground. She just sang songs” (Makem, 1984).

Singing technique In my opinion there is so much overlapping and borrowing of technique that it is very difficult to subdivide these songs and singing styles. For example, I believe that Joe Heaney singing the “Rocks of Bawn” in the English language is still singing in a sean-nós style. I feel that it would be hard to describe Dolores Keane’s version of “A Stór Mo Chroí”, an English language song, as being anything entirely outside of the sean-nós style and Mary Black’s version of “Mo Ghile Mear”, a sean-nós song, is in my opinion performed as a folk singer. The traditional singing of the Irish language songs and English language songs share many of the same characteristics but “they are two different traditions and are generally celebrated as such” (Mac Con Iomaire, 2011, p. 628). This is only partly true as I believe they are deeply connected. Ó Bróithe cited in Vallely’s Companion, states that “Underlying all of the expressions, however, is a core accent, or style of singing which is mostly based in and shared with the Irish language performance style” (Ó Bróithe, 2011, p. 625). The Irish language songs are often sung in a sean-nós style but not always, the English language ballads are sung in a traditional style which borrows greatly from sean-nós in terms of technique and approach and the

54 macaronic songs fit into the sean-nós school. It is nearly impossible to define them separately and certain tendencies rather than rules pertain to each. In my understanding of these concepts there is much overlapping of the traits.

Living example I am a living example of someone who sings all of the above and freely borrows from the techniques and approach of the different styles to create my own voice. For example, I would sing “Sliabh Geal gCua na Féile”, a sean-nós song, in a fairly sean-nós style having learnt it from Nioclás Toibín and Áine Uí Cheallaigh, yet I would still not be considered the real ‘McCoy’ or a real sean-nós singer and indeed I don’t consider myself to be a sean-nós singer. Much of my vocal placement is modern and influenced by jazz and more folk tendencies and my command of the Irish language lacks confidence. When I talk about voice placement I am an example of a very mixed style of singing. I grew up learning some classical technique and attained grade 8 in voice from the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Many sean-nós singers would not come through formal classical training. For example, one aspect of the classical training that I utilise is warming up: gently singing vocal exercises to limber the vocal chords. I also absorbed song technique from the radio by listening to jazz singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan who both have a lot of air in their singing. My notions around a more modern sound refer to having a round open sound and singing in my chest voice mostly as opposed to a more nasal or traditional sound. The folk tendencies which I am referring to here stem from listening to the singing of Mary Black and Maura O’Connell who both employ a more modern round sound in their singing. But when I sing Joe Heaney’s song “The Rocks of Bawn”, an English language song I would consider this to be in the traditional vein of singing, borrowing greatly from Joe Heaney who was a sean-nós singer, in terms of the ornaments and inflections I use, but not voice placement. When I sing “Cucanandaí”, a macaronic rhythmic song, again I borrow from the sean-nós technique in terms of rhythm and ornamentation. When I sing “Ballad of Accounting”, a modern English folk song written in 1963 by Ewan MacColl, I superimpose ornaments and sentiment from traditional singing and make it my own, turning all of the above on its head. So it is a varied and much nuanced arena and it is very difficult to pinpoint or divide the songs from the singing. I argue that the more modern folk songs borrow greatly from the song traditions of both the Irish and English language songs. To tease this out further I

55 looked back at some of the historical knowledge we have of traditional song. I was also interested to see how political Irish song evolved. As someone who writes new songs and uses poetry to aid my creative process, I wanted to understand more how orality and poetry were used in the past. This idea comes to the fore particularly in my second performance when the exploration of my creative process threw up very illuminating ideas on my practice. Again I viewed this all through the prism of my own singing.

Historical overview of traditional songs and singing Traditional Irish song is dense in text and cultural knowledge. The songs traditional Irish singers orate are gateways to strong cultural descriptions that play out through the language and the histories within the words. To gain a more nuanced approach to the concept of traditional singing I want to explore some of the historical origins of traditional song. While we would need a time machine to actually define exactly the way people sang in the past, we can surmise from older texts and collectors, and by examining how present day singers absorb, collect, carry, and transmit the tradition make some suggestions as to what happened in the past. But much of this is conjecture. I want to focus on storytelling first, with reference to the lays, to contextualise its importance in my own performances and how it came to the fore in my artistic approach particularly during my second performance which will be discussed in Chapter 4.

Lays What are thought to be the oldest form of song or song-poetry in Ireland are the lays. Poetry and song are deeply connected in Ireland and personally I see them as coming from the same root: Narrative Lays and especially the lays of Fionn Mac Cumhaill are the oldest form of storytelling in song which survived the Middle Ages into modern Irish society…Lays…are heroic songs of antiquity, to be compared with poetry older than the Christian middle ages. Like Homeric epic they refer to a mythology which was old in their day, sometimes imperfectly transmitted – or deliberately veiled? – but meaningful (Shields, 1993, p. 10).

Under the old Gaelic order which included Scotland and Ireland the bardic poets were the carriers of the song and poetic traditions of the Gaelic aristocracy. They enjoyed the much-privileged lives of shelter, food, wine, comforts from the chieftains, great honour and ceremony. They were schooled in syllabic metre and believed to have

56 chanted the song-poems at the féiles or feasts, perhaps alongside a harpist (Ó Tuama, 1981, p. 71). “John Derrick’s well-known illustration of the performance of the Irish bardic praise poetry in the late sixteenth century – not heroic song though perhaps similar – shows a reacaire, ‘reciter’ and a harper as two persons performing together” (Shields, 1993, p. 17).

5 John Derricke, 1581. Reacaire agus Cldirseoir. 4 Speed, 1600. An Fear John Poetry Reciter and Uasal agus an Bhean Uasal Harper. Eireannach, The Civil Irishman and the Civil Irish Woman. Figure 2: Illustration from Poems of the Dispossessed (Ó Tuama, 1981, p. 71)

The art of storytelling continued and the repertoire of storytellers may have included some of these lays. We have some recordings of the lays but they are sadly not now available in the oral tradition. But we do have the last known recording of singing of a fairly complete narrative lay from the 1940s by two Donegal men, Mícheal and Seamus Ó hIghne from Glencolumbkille (Ó hIghne, n.d.). There is scant evidence of how these lays were performed but they are very interesting to me because of the song-poetry performance that I found myself working on for the 2nd performance in my arts practice PhD. I can see a connection between the performance of the lays, the storytelling tradition and the songs in Ireland. I consume a 6 WenceslasHollar, 1634. Bean uasal Eireannach. lot of poetry and the poems or ideasAn from Irishwoman. the readings often feed into my creative practice. Personally I see them as being deeply linked and used in a creative fashion to support each other. For example, I took the poem “Home” by Paula Meehan and set it to music for my album Two More Hours. I will be exploring this further in the 3rd chapter but I wanted to substantiate the historical context of this artistic endeavour.

57 The storytelling or the back story is still a vital part of the performance within traditional singing. Indeed performers are often judged on their ‘banter’ and storytelling technique or prowess alongside their singing. In the interview with Niamh Dunne it was revealing I thought when in answer to my question on how I connect with the audience she said: … the songs and your voice and the way you sing them and the way you feel them that’s the emotional connection, that’s the strongest part with an audience but you’re also very endearing in terms of the chat and the bits of jokes in terms of introducing the songs (Dunne, 2019).

And this was confirmed by Sean Óg when answering the same question, he said, “Especially in songs if you talk a little bit about the song beforehand which you do. Also the little bit of chat or joking around, it also helps people to relax” (Graham, 2019). This overlapping or intertwining of the story and the song and the poem and the music is an integral part of the Gaelic order and customs that have been transmitted for centuries (Shields, 1993, p. 153). When the old Gaelic order was decimated by the Plantations of Ireland during the 16th and 17th centuries, the bardic poets, after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, for the following century attempted as much as they could to continue in their former way of life. “In the next hundred years some 85% of Irish land was transferred into the hands of the new English colonists and the old Irish aristocratic order disappeared” (Ó Tuama, 1981, p. xix). According to Ó Tuama the models for Irish song were developed between 1200-1600 approximately when the noble Irish families maintained hereditary bardic poets. When this order collapsed the Bards took their song-poems out into the ‘ordinary’ world and most of our Irish language traditional songs come from this period between the 16th and 18th century composed by poet harpists or poets considered to be of lower rank than the bards. Ó Tuama and Kinsella trace the pathway of the songs and poems of this time period. The metred rhyming scheme in these songs is accented and the older syllabic metre of the Gaelic bards was supplanted, particularly when we look at the English language songs that began to supplant the older verse. Again according to Ó Tuama “It seems certain that an accentual poetry existed throughout the medieval period without being written down in the official family anthologies, and that it was

58 only the undermining of the bardic order that allowed this poetry to reach a new dominance” (Ó Tuama, 1981, p. xxi). Hence we could say that the inheritors of the old Gaelic order are the songs sung in a sean-nós style, a line of Gaelic singing that has never been broken (Mac Con Iomaire, 2011, p. 627). “…many of these songs are considered to be ‘na hamhráin mhóra’ (great, or big songs)” (Ó Tuama, 2011, p. 627). Subsequently these poems of the dispossessed31 and new English language ballads became our traditional ballad narrative songs. Not to oversimplify a deeply complex process here it should be stressed that many of the English language songs came from England and Scotland and there was much cross fertilisation. “Songs in English can be divided into two categories: those derived from Gaelic melodies, and using Hiberno-English, and those of British origin” (Williams & Ó Laoire, 2011, p. 65). They are so closely linked and entwined and even more so if you take the translations on board. The songs such as Dónal Óg and Róisín Dubh are examples of the songs from this era. In many ways these three different canons of song material - folk, traditional and sean-nós - are often referred to under the one banner of ‘traditional song’ in Ireland. The distinctions between these three categories is not the important thing for me as especially during my singing I draw from all of the above pools.

Songs: “The Rocks of Bawn” and “Hollis Brown” I have chosen a comparative study of my performances of “The Rocks of Bawn”32 and “Hollis Brown”33. In choosing these two songs and exploring how my creativity is expressed during performance, an arts practice methodological approach, I find some similarities and some obvious differences between the two. “The Rocks of Bawn” is a traditional song that I learned from the singing of Joe Heaney. “Hollis Brown” is a folk song written by Bob Dylan; hence this allows me the contextual framework of traditional and folk song to hang my theories upon. While they come

31 Dispossessed: The plantations of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries saw the confiscation of lands from the Gaelic chiefdoms and Hiberno-Norman dynasties. These people were dispossessed of their lands and culture and replaced with English settlers. Hence the term dispossessed. 32 For performance video of “Rocks of Bawn” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/r9eS6M86xdQ 33 For performance video of “Hollis Brown” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/AA5A9-vg-4U

59 from different though related genres when I sing them or exercise my imagination they sound as if they have found a home, at least to me. Within the song tradition in Ireland there are many examples of songs from other traditions being absorbed into the repertoire, so much so that we then claim them as being Irish. “Black is the Colour” and “Little Musgrave” are examples of this. “Foreign bodies may fall in, or be dropped in, or thrown in, but they do not divert the course of the river nor do they stop it from flowing, it absorbs them, carrying them with it as it flows onwards” (Ó Riada, 1982, pp. 19-20). During my analysing of the performance I note that when I sing the “Rocks of Bawn” I utilise many stylistic features of traditional singing; ornamentation, voice placement and stretching certain words to emphasis them, but I am not singing it as Joe Heaney would34. I have moulded and shaped the song to suit myself and my own vocal needs and of course to express myself emotionally, this is my creativity at work in practice. When I sing “Hollis Brown” I don’t sing it as Bob Dylan would, and I have incorporated some traditional Irish techniques, ornaments, but not as many as in the “Rocks of Bawn”, again my own approach to this song has shaped the performance. What the two songs do have in common thematically is the focus on poverty. They are both excellent examples of drawing the listener into the words and the story and transporting us to another world. My choice of these two songs draws from my own need to speak about the issue of poverty. I am constantly referring to the meaning and the story told within the song. It is the story or emotional meaning that I am constantly striving for. Singers I believe are looking for songs that can deliver a message that either serves their own needs or serves the needs of the broader community, hopefully both are attained. I will be exploring this more in chapter 3 within the conversation on the performance of social justice but this is a prime example of how important our experiences are, in not alone choosing song material but how vital a factor experiential wisdom is, in its contribution to the performativity of the singing. The versions of the two songs are also greatly influenced by the arrangements of the instrumentation and this has a bearing on the performativity of my singing.

34 For an excellent account of the sean-nós singing style see Chapter 2 of Williams and Ó Laoire’s Bright Star of the West where they state that “Many sean-nós singers perform with a strong nasal tone” (Williams & Ó Laoire, 2011, p. 55).

60

The Singing of Traditional Songs In analysing the actual singing I note that the experience of determining the song and making it your own runs deep within Irish traditional singing (Williams & Ó Laoire, 2011, p. 55). Certain techniques are employed creatively, a turn here, a vocal push or pull on a word to accent the emotion, dragging the breath over into the second line to emphasise particular words, voice placement, lack or use of melisma, melodic or intervallic ornamentation where regional styles are much discussed and utilized (Ó Canainn, 1978, pp. 71-78) (Bodley, 1972). While melodic variation is encouraged there are implicit unspoken limitations set in traditional Irish singing. My own singing of the “Rocks of Bawn” gives a living example of the performativity of all of the elements discussed above.

Performativity Performativity is how you sing the song, what feelings you bring to your performance to bear testimony to the words and to convey meaning and emotion. The temporal and societal context in which the performance evolves also has a bearing on how the song is construed and heard. “…Song is a richly performative social process that has the capacity to form the very ideas we live by” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, pp. 4-5). Ní Shíocháin builds on these concepts in an article stating “Thus the traditional song form can be seen to be a liminal powerhouse of ideas through which meaning can be recreated and new social and political visions forged and voiced” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 177). The first verse in the “Rocks of Bawn” is a calling, “Come all you loyal heroes,” getting the audience’s attention, then the main theme is explained very quickly, “Don’t hire with any master till you know what your work will be.” Traditional techniques utilised are the ornaments, varied as the verses go down into the deep well of the song, the understanding constantly being reinforced. I become more confident as the song goes along. I would see myself as being in the ‘flow’ mode here. The flow experience being “deep concentration, high and balanced challenges and skills, a sense of control and satisfaction…” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 80) and I find the confidence within this experience to try out new creative ideas and a reworking of the song. I attempt to attain this state of flow and connectivity every time I sing.

61 Accompaniment Working from and reflecting on the audio-visual recording of the song “The Rocks of Bawn”, I see that having Sean Óg Graham accompany me on the guitar does temper or affect my performance. It often makes the song more metrical but as you can hear in the third line of each verse Sean Óg goes with me to extend the timing in that particular phrase which I am emphasising for meaning. Sean Óg is particularly generous on this front and hence that is why I find it a treat to play with him. Sean Óg has an instinctive feel for the music and reacts to the things that I do. When I questioned him about this particular phrase in the song he said “No I don't think about it at all…it's an intuition I think” and he went on to say “it's just this unspoken thing isn't it. It's just something that's there and it doesn't need to be talked about” (Graham, 2019). With a sensitive accompanist I don’t feel constrained in any way and I don’t sing this song very differently to being unaccompanied although I did find that I ended up singing it slower with the guitar accompaniment to suit the guitar part. Frank Harte and Donal Lunny35 complemented each other in this sense, Frank saying that “Donal is a fantastic accompanist as you don’t even know he is there” (Harte, 2003). While this might seem humorous at the same time it is a huge reflection of what singers think and feel about accompaniment. A good accompanist is someone who is generous to the song and the singer and doesn’t get in the way of either. Equally as a singer I like to lean into the accompaniment and see it as a partnership. In reflecting in my auto-ethnographic writing on my own role in the creation of this performance I find that I share Bartleet’s viewpoint “that my work has nothing to do with the black notes on the page: it has to do with people and the amazing relationships that music allows us make” (Bartleet, 2009, p. 724). I owe a lot to the musicians for helping me to realise my musical vision for these particular songs.

Satire for the performance of social justice To continue the analysis of the “Rocks of Bawn” I note that there is very sparse use of melisma for the fourth verse perhaps to stress the despair felt and brought on by poverty. If we were to compare the first and fifth verses we can see that the amount of ornamentation has increased significantly. The final verses employ large amounts of sarcasm as his only choice to escape his plight is to join the British army. This is

35 Donal Lunny: Irish folk musician, producer and bouzouki player. Member of the bands Planxty, The Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, Mozaik, Coolfin and LAPD.

62 conveyed by a change in my vocal tone and for example in the way I annunciate ‘Queen of England’. “The fear of satire is well established in the Irish poetic tradition, with no one being above insult” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 42). Referring to Ó hÓgáin, Ní Shíocháin goes on to state that, “Such was the status of both the poet and the satire in Gaelic society that it was believed in the Irish tradition that poetic satire had the ability to both kill and maim” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 42). The irony of this in Ireland is very real and still felt today. Essentially I am bringing my own prejudices and feeling to the fore here to make my political point against poverty through my creative act of singing. Shields states that irony can be involved in the performance and that it is right to take into account this temperamental aspect of traditional singing, which today we would reframe as performativity. “It may also be in performance that irony is introduced” (Shields, 1993, p. 8).

Orality Albert B. Lord’s book The Singer of Tales presents the theory that oral poems and songs in a traditional mode are recreated with each performance. His research argues that the poets and singers of Yugoslavia learned and embodied the formulas, themes and structures of the traditional material but that during the performance while they drew on these building blocks they recreated and recomposed the stories on the spot. “The song we are listening to is “the song”; for each performance is more than a performance; it is a re-creation” (Lord, 1960, p. 101). Lord’s work was significant and his ideas around each performance being a recreation of the song is evident in Irish traditional singing. These ideas were also of importance to the performance of I Walked into My Head which I discuss in chapter 4.

Coming from a varied background of traditional, folk and jazz singing it took me some time to incorporate and understand what the perceived boundaries in traditional singing were. These restrictions are more tendencies rather than a set of explicit prescriptions. This is a deeply held wisdom within the tradition that is almost elusive. I embodied this knowledge without anyone explaining it to me in black and white. I sat and listened and acquired almost by osmosis the style of singing from a young age and didn’t think too much about it, just did it: He has decided he wants to sing himself…Before he actually begins to sing, he is, consciously or unconsciously, laying the foundation. He is learning the stories and becoming acquainted with the heroes and their names, the faraway

63 places and the habits of long ago. The themes of the poetry are becoming familiar to him and his feeling for them is sharpened as he hears more and as he listens to the men discussing the songs amongst themselves. At the same time he is imbibing the rhythm of the singing and to an extent also the rhythm of the thoughts as they are expressed in song. Even at this early stage the oft-repeated phrases which we call formulas are being absorbed (Lord, 1960, p. 20).

It wasn’t until I started teaching that I had to break down or deconstruct what I was expressing in order for me to explain it to a student and indeed pass the learning on. It is an invaluable exercise. I learned many of these stylistic features mentioned above by listening and repeating. It took years of practice for me to embody the tradition. I stress though that it didn’t quite feel like practice, I loved it, I ate songs up and transcribed all the time. I listened for years and it felt as if my ears were walking around on stalks searching for a good song. I might have remembered nothing else about a conversation other than the mention of a certain song. Paying attention is an integral part of being an artist. It can be so exhilarating living life this way.

Connection with the audience As noted above my singing evolves throughout the song and I try ideas out if I am comfortable. If I am struggling in any way from nerves or feeling that someone on the stage is not with me or indeed if the audience is not with me I find that the flow mode can be interrupted and stagnant. Collaboration, trust and interaction between myself the musicians and the audience are vital. I note in reviewing the video how I attempt to pull the audience in, first with the introduction, but then at the end of each verse I drop my voice as if in deference to theirs, not pressuring them to sing, but welcoming them to join in on the last line. I believe that this builds love and understanding between us and helps to build community. Much of my singing stems from a traditional approach and while this is different to performing at a concert many of the same sensibilities persist. Mac Con Iomaire refers to “the interaction between singer and audience…in more intimate settings”, describing the practice of “vocal encouragement (in which the listener interjects a phrase such as ‘Maith thú’ into the song at an appropriate moment, [and]“helping’ the singer by joining in on a verse or phrase of the song” (Mac Con Iomaire, 2011, p. 630). For myself I prefer to evoke feelings and illuminate ideas with specific song texts and an aesthetic approach that tries to be persuasive rather than forceful. I believe that if I am engaged and invested in my singing then the audience will be too. This was confirmed again by Sean Óg when I

64 asked him if he felt the different aspects of my performance create a connection if any with the audience. He said “I think when you're singing you totally go into a zone and people like to be taken on a journey in a performance and watching and hearing ya, I think it lets them go on that journey” (Graham, 2019).

Creativity and reworking the song In terms of creativity many singers firstly embody the knowledge by listening and sharing the experience of singing, by being in the presence of older venerated singers (Lord, 1960, p. 20). I tend to work in this fashion, when I have a body of understanding to work with, I start stretching out my own creativity; after listening and transcribing the different singers’ versions of the songs I then pick and choose the words I would like to sing myself. Then playing around with songs either through variations in the singing, trying out different vocal techniques, using a chest voice or a head voice or a mixture of the two, experimenting with different keys, I find a place within myself, within my whole body for the song to sit. “…Heaney developed multiple performance personae to serve his personal mission of musically exploring his heritage, his influences, and his long set of experiences” (Williams & Ó Laoire, 2011, p. 44). In essence your body becomes like a well of information from which you can draw on while performing. Some singers then choose to take the song and collaborate and arrange the material with other musicians. But firstly the information or knowledge must be attained. People have to do the work of acquiring the songs, collecting, sourcing and imitating other singers firstly, then they can begin to put their own take on the songs, indeed make them their own. I love this element of creativity held lovingly within the tradition and greatly admire that people are allowed to be themselves. This is only true though if your teacher is compassionate and allows for this style of learning. Frank Harte never told me how to sing a song, neither did Áine Uí Cheallaigh or Mick Moloney, they generously passed the songs on and wanted the songs to be sung. Frank would give out if I left out a verse but he was always supportive. As you can see in the performance of the audio-visual recording of the song “Hollis Brown” and my body language I am really enjoying singing this song. I love it. There is something about the immediacy of new material in a performance that brings a new and energetic enthusiasm and this is a really great song that delivers in so many areas. There is no documentary evidence to suggest that Dylan directly borrowed from our own Irish tradition in writing this song but he definitely did for other songs such as

65 “With God on our Side” coming from “The Patriot Game” and “The Restless Farewell” coming from “The Parting Glass”. It feels to me that the long narrative in “Hollis Brown” is suggestive of an Irish song influence. In Ireland we really only get going by around the 3rd or 4th verse. The scene needs to be set and Dylan really does inhabit this poor man’s mind and details and illuminates with great artistry the reality of poverty:

Your baby's eyes look crazy they're a-tugging at your sleeve (x2) You walk the floor and wonder why With every breath you breathe

In his Chronicles memoir, Bob Dylan talks about his nights in the East Village with the Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem, and the impact that their singing had on him. He drew on these events to pursue his own pathway and also drew on many traditional Irish songs that would have a profound influence on his song writing. All through the night they would sing drinking songs, country ballads and rousing rebel songs that would lift the roof. The rebellion songs were a really serious thing. The language was flashy and provocative – a lot of action in the words, all sung with great gusto. The singer always had a merry light in his eye, had to have it (Dylan, 2004, p. 83).

Overview of Political Irish Song and Folk Song For myself a sense of social responsibility towards the truth of the world as I see it today has always been integral and inherent to my performances. In many ways I carry on the legacy of many Irish folk singers who have used songs as a political motivator and provocateur. My performances are subjective and I am not claiming to be objective, but they also can be viewed politically and culturally from a wide angle lens. Chang sees “…culture as a product of interactions between self and others in a community of practice…self is the starting point for cultural acquisition and transmission” (Chang, 2008, p. 23). I have been trying to carve out a space for myself where I can cultivate my own style of ‘speaking out’ or being an activist. I sing and view today’s folk songs as being the modern political inheritors of the older narrative ballads in Ireland. When I sing “Hollis Brown” as an Irish female folk singer I stand proudly in the time-honoured Irish tradition of singing out against oppression. Many of the songs are from the point of view of a voiceless and vulnerable people and reflect our woes as an oppressed people. Ireland was colonised by the English from the 12th century onwards and while there are songs relating to many

66 different aspects of politics in Ireland this issue of colonialism dominates the political song repertoire in one way or another. Songs such as “Shamrock Shore”, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, “Revenge for Skibbereen”, “Sailing off to Yankee Land” and “The Croppy Boy”, are just a few examples. Traditional songs are what I believe to be the real narrative of Ireland as they are the voices of ordinary people. Frank Harte said that “Those in power write the histories, while those who suffer write the songs” (Harte, 1998) and we have an awful lot of songs. “Narrative - a general term for a reported sequence of linked events…The dominant mode of traditional narrative…is a report of fulfilled action” (Shields, 1993, pp. 1-2). A story is told in each narrative, artistically. Moloney states: …political songwriting in the English language in Ireland can be traced back to the heyday of the United Irishman in the 1790s who promoted politically charged songs in a bid to forge a sense of unified national purpose in the years leading up to the failed 1798 rebellion (Moloney, 2016, p. 11).

I believe that the ancestor to political songs in Ireland are the Aisling and the Jacobite songs in the Irish language. For example: an aisling like “Róisín Dubh”, A Jacobite song like “Mo Ghile Mear” or more overtly political songs such as “Eamonn an Chnoic” and “Seán Ó Duibhir a’ Ghleanna”. The aisling is a Gaelic genre: a vision ostensibly erotic in which a woman seen is actually a national symbol. The trick is the same as the one used by medieval devotional poets who turned erotic pastourelles into encounters with the blessed virgin.…The aisling poets eventually clarify the metaphoric meaning and reject the literal one... Such metaphor is ubiquitous in traditional song; metaphor which transfers love imagery to politics is particularly Gaelic (Shields, 1993, pp. 7-8).

Breathnach says that “The aisling was a literary, not a folk creation…” and goes on to state: In a dream or vision, the poet, wandering alone, spies a spéirbhean – literally a skywoman – coming toward him. He describes her appearance, being particularly lavish in his description of her hair. When they meet he questions her identity, mentioning the names of all the ladies he can recall from Irish and classical mythology. She is none of these, but tells him at last that she is Ireland, grieving under the oppression of foreigners who shortly shall be driven from the land…The aisling type and other patriotic songs written by the eighteenth century poets were composed for oral circulation, not for silent reading. They were wedded to airs already known, and so were immediately available to the whole community. The designation of Ireland by names such as An tSeanbhean Bhocht, An Druimionn Donn Dílis, or personal female names such as Caitlín Ní

67 Ullacháin or Cáit Ní Dhuibhir was a favourite poetic device in the eighteenth century (Breathnach, 1971, p. 23).

In the Jacobite song “An Buachaillín Bán”, Bonny Prince Charlie36 is referred to metaphorically as the fair haired boy who is going to save Ireland from colonialism. “Overtly political verse…found its highest expression in...aisling, or vision poems, in which the poet encounters a vision-woman who foretells a Stuart redeemer” (Ó Tuama, 1981, p. xxvii). Many English language political songs follow this train of thought: …essentially, (songs) of a victimised people outlining their suffering and hardships caused by exploitation and cruelty, and who, somehow, show themselves to possess a transcendental ability to rise above it all and succeed against the odds (Moloney, 2016, p. 9).

Nationalist songs that I have sung myself such as “Shamrock Shore”, “Wind that Shakes the Barley” and “An tSeanbhean Bhocht” are examples of songs which display the trait of rising up against all the odds. Often the political references in political songs are hidden in metaphor. Even seeing illustrations of birds on ballad sheets could be understood as songs with political content. For example Charles Stuart Parnell is referred to as the “Blackbird of Sweet Avondale” or James the II as the Pretender to the English Crown is signalled as the “Blackbird” (Shields, 1981, p. 8). Everything is so entwined it would be difficult not to see social commentary in most of the songs. Knowledge of the histories and the metaphoric symbolism do help in understanding the songs. In fact, the audience is often imbued with a deep cultural knowledge that is reiterated and reconfirmed during performances. Of course when singing abroad the cultural understanding often has to be explained which is perhaps why telling the back story or lore behind a song has become an integral part of performances abroad. Sometimes I have felt that this language can seem archaic and not relevant to today’s society and so I have always attempted in my performances to connect the older songs to modern times. And indeed to include the voice of the woman.

36 Bonnie Prince Charlie or Charles Edward Stuart (b.1720) attempted to regain the English crown from George II many times in the early 18th century. Finally, being defeated in 1746 at Culloden. He lived on in songs in Scotland as “The Highland Laddie” and in Irish songs as the fair haired boy or “An Buachaillín Bán”. Again against the odds he was supposed to come back and save us from English forces.

68 I have attempted to do this mostly in my introductions to songs as that gives me the space to speak openly on political issues. Again relying on the age old approach of storytelling or bringing the lore of the song to the fore in the introductions, perhaps channelling an reacaire.

Conclusion In this chapter I contextualised the literature on Irish traditional and folk song, writing a brief historical overview of Irish traditional song itself. I examined the origins of political folk song as it forms a central part of my repertoire. I drew on my performances of the songs “The Rocks of Bawn” and “Ballad of Hollis Brown” both to throw further light on the cultural frameworks of traditional and folk song and to discuss issues such as performativity, song arrangement and orality. In contemplating these two performances I found that I am drawing greatly from my own experiential wisdom and from my political belief system in order to perform the songs, giving credence to the somatic intelligence that I have garnered over the years. I am fuelling the songs with my musical knowledge and technique that is based in traditional and folk singing. The singing is deeply concentrated on the narrative, the need to tell the story, to believe and deliver the song meaning. Drawing from the well of my bodily stored intellect I am using ornaments, phrasing, voice placement (often a mix of the head and chest voice), that I have learned from traditional and folk singers. The introverted approach that is the corner-stone of much traditional singing is particularly useful in the “Rocks of Bawn” to illicit sympathy for the character in the song. And the injustice of poverty is brought to the fore in both performances by emphasising the use of satire and irony. While the “Rocks of Bawn” is a traditional Irish song and “Hollis Brown” is an American folk song written by Bob Dylan they are both distilled through my own Irish accent and folk sensibilities. For myself what matters is that they are good songs. My aesthetic sensibilities are thus difficult to pin down and my practice delivers a broad eclectic approach. This eclectic approach and belief system reaffirms and confirms my core cultural conviction and experiential wisdom that the songs are pathways to our shared sense of humanity. They bring us to one another. They carry us back and forth to new and old worlds. They are our varied, beautiful, cultural gifts to one another.

69 Chapter 3: Creative process and the performance of social justice

“Those in power write the histories, while those who suffer write the songs” (Harte, 1998)

In this chapter I examine my first PhD performance which took place on the 25th of April 2018. I performed with Niamh Dunne, Sean Óg Graham and Niall Vallely in Dolan’s of Limerick. I use the audio-visual footage of the performance to examine my creative process and the performance of social justice. I examine where I perform, who I choose to work with in the creative space, what songs I choose to sing and how that repertoire represents my philosophy on life. The what, where, who and why is a methodological approach in arts practice research. I then analyse the creative process of my composition and song-writing. In order to re-emphasise that my practice is my research I move to examine how these particular songs were performed. I zoom out to explore more the cultural and political voice that I inhabit as a creative female folk singer in Ireland. Finally, by examining my repertoire from the folk canon I explore not only how my creativity is processed during the performance but also view how my social activism is witnessed through the performance of social justice. My primary method of investigation is auto-ethnographic: writing a self- narrative to express how my art evolves and to capture the deeply personal nature of my creativity. Seeing how my art develops and identifying its imaginative expressions and agendas I explored sourcing, collecting and reimagining the repertoire, writing the songs, working with the band, elements of arrangements, rehearsing, talking to the audience and trying to give some background information and insider knowledge from the perspective of a performer. Musicians build up a performance from a lifetime of experience and we often break the performance up into smaller parts, sections and songs to exercise some control over the situation. I particularly like the metaphorical analogy, suggested by Mick Moloney (Moloney, 2019), of a performance being like a gestalt, for the overlapping and imbricated style of merging musical and creative strands in a busy life is very much mirrored in my performances. A gestalt is understood as making a whole from different parts. The songs are like a murmuration of starlings merging together to find a home. We understand our experience directly when we see it as being structured coherently in terms of gestalts that have emerged directly from interaction with and in our environment. We understand experience metaphorically when we use

70 a gestalt from one domain of experience to structure experience in another domain (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 230).

I see myself as a researcher aiming to understand my life experience and my performance within the structures of a new domain of academia. To add to this thinking during the research I became more aware of how vulnerable I am in a performance and how I have constantly struggled to overcome this and to navigate these murky waters. The area of most contention for myself is not the actual singing or songs but the talking. Much of this anxiety comes from my need to talk about social justice issues and my fear that I won’t do a good enough job. As this thesis continued I began to see from my reflections how much anxiety was evident and my vulnerability became highlighted (Bartleet, 2009). Examining how I felt about my performances did allow me to create some distance and see them in a different light. It is difficult to see yourself when you are in the whirlwind of a performance and hence this throws up some of the key issues in an arts practice PhD performance. Other methodological resources such as the video recording were exceptionally helpful for reflections. Another methodological approach was the collection of data in the form of a questionnaire after the gig, which I gave to the audience members. I distributed over 35 questionnaires, leaving them on the tables with a pen provided. The questionnaires addressed the idea of agency as I was trying to find a sense of how the performance affected people. I asked: did I give a voice to the people in the songs; did you feel empowered; were you emotionally affected and how? I also asked them to consider my style of singing. I include some analysis of the answers from the questionnaires in this chapter. Some knowledge gleaned from the audience I expected and other parts were surprising but enlightening and it helped me greatly in the preparation for the second performance. Utilising another key arts practice methodology I include some of the comments made during the ethnographic interviews. As mentioned in chapter 1 I interviewed Niamh Dunne, Niall Vallely and Sean Óg Graham as they played on the gig in Dolan’s. The interviews were very engaging and enlightening and shed light on how the other performers view both the performance and myself.

71 Performance: Dolan’s of Limerick. 25th of April 2018. Karan Casey with Niall Vallely, Niamh Dunne and Seán Óg Graham.

Place: In exploring the different options for the concert I decided to opt for a more intimate club setting. Usually I don’t have a choice. I perform in the theatre or venue that is going to pay me. While I have toured and performed in many theatres worldwide, I did cut my teeth in the smaller folk clubs so they feel more like home to me and drawing on my experiential knowledge in this atmosphere, I felt I would be more comfortable. Dolan’s is a pub in the centre of Limerick city. The patrons Mick and Valerie Dolan have organised gigs for years and are very kind supporters of the folk and traditional community. I was very grateful to them for the opportunity to perform there. People: The people I chose for this performance are Niall Vallely, Niamh Dunne and Sean Óg Graham. I trust in their abilities as musicians both technically and emotionally. While they are all exceptional players, over the years I have learned again from experiential knowledge and research that in order for me to fulfil my role as the lead singer I feel more secure if I have musicians around me that I know will respond generously to me as a person rather than just another gig with a singer. Product: I much prefer to see art as a process rather than a product. An enormous part of how I approach performance is immersed in my own “take” on the songs - how I sing them. It would be very difficult for me to separate out the product which could be myself, the song, the tradition or the entire performance itself. Or perhaps in commercial terms I am the product and the song performance is the process. The song and performances are deeply entwined and embodied and grow continuously from my experiential life knowledge. Each performance is much like a “topping up” of this data and research. Much of the research in the first chapter explored the absorption of knowledge through the body, inclusive of the mind but not separating the mind out as the central processing hub and indeed gave credence to the concept of embodied knowledge. As a singer of folk and traditional material and self-composed song over the years there has been a merging of musical identities within my own performance, a synthesis of differing musical ideas offering an eclectic and much varied performance. In many ways I view the songs as being fields of self-expression that combine musical genres but allow me to distil the songs through the central processing core, myself. Process: So process is my absorption of the song, often collected or learned from people, CDs and books, or by composing the songs from scratch and then

72 distilling the songs and working imaginatively with them. My own creativity comes to the fore here. A philosophy has emerged where my own life experiences attract me to certain songs. I explore what beliefs and value systems distinguish my own performances to identify the creative qualities that are essential to my singing. I will explore whether cultural, social or political agendas are inherent or implied in the song choices and their treatment during a performance later in this chapter. Again it is very difficult for me to subdivide these different areas within myself as there is much overlapping and imbricating. I like to think of myself as a distiller of good songs.

Gestalt Performance Following on from conversations with my supervisors, Professor Mick Moloney and Doctor Sandra Joyce and my research in chapter one I began to ponder how Zahavi and Gallagher describe phenomenology as parking the descriptions already set up in the cognitive sciences to avoid highly abstract and technical viewpoints. They start with experience. They neither affirm nor deny the previous philosophies, advocating Husserl’s idea of basing thoughts on the subject of the mind on the way things are experienced. “Back to the things themselves!” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 6). They state that: Intentionality is a ubiquitous character of consciousness, and as the phenomenologists put it, it means that all consciousness (all perceptions, memories, imaginings, judgements, etc.) is about or of something. In that sense experience is never an isolated or elemental process. It always involves reference to the world, taking that term in a very wide sense to include not just the physical environment, but the social and cultural world, which may include things that do not exist in a physical way (for example Hamlet…) (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 7).

About intentionality they state “This is the idea that experience, whether it is perception, memory, imagination, judgement, belief etc., is always directed to some object” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 11). So my ‘intentionality’ in performance can be related to song text and meaning, culture, politics, and my own experience. These viewpoints are relevant during singing and directed towards the entire performance. I come with the whole package of prejudices, judgements, memories and if successful new ideas are formed. Gallagher and Zahavi give the example of seeing or perceiving a car and not being able to view the whole car but your mind fills in the gaps. Perhaps this is what the audience does, it has a perceptual experience of the performance. During a

73 performance I often improvise and try out new ideas and so I have incorporated these inventions into my practice. Here new intellectual and emotional ideas and insights are gained, sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously. When I perform it’s as if I ‘wake up’ after the song. I unequivocally state that when the performance is going well or when I am ‘in the zone’ or ‘flowing’ that I am somewhere else, escaping life’s realities and existing in a different zone, having an experiential addictive moment. “Generally in flow we forget time, and hours pass by in what seems like minutes” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 113). That is why performance is so engaging - I am off flying up in the gestalt! That is why I keep wanting and needing it in my life. This bodily and intellectual attainment of knowledge through the senses is also how I feel when I write fiction. It feels the same when I come up for air after writing for a protracted period of time. Time out of mind. Time lived in the body. This somatic approach where the body and the senses and the unconscious are afforded an intelligence is finding credence in many areas of philosophical thinking (Casey, 2018).

The creative process The creative process is a phenomenon where something novel is produced. Whether it is a song, an idea, a painting, a computer program, a scientific invention it usually sits within a field of expertise that is recognised by society at large to be something of value or worth. How that society deems it fit for purpose or valuable depends on the environmental or cultural attitudes of that social grouping. According to Csikszentmihalyi: …creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 6)

As mentioned above and in chapter one, the use of the term phenomenon relates to the philosophical study of Phenomenology. It is a study of experience or consciousness that deals directly with events - phenomena - like singing a song, and how the experience is interpreted. Csikszentmihalyi in utilising phenomenology for exploring creativity applies the principles of information theory. “These principles include knowledge about how the sensory data are processed, stored and used – the

74 dynamics of attention and memory” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 26). Hence in looking at how my sensory data is stored and processed I hope to give credence to the bodily storing of song and lore, and to the importance of experiential wisdom. I will now look at the creative process of song writing utilising some of Csikzsentmihalyi’s writings and also engaging with some texts by Eavan Boland. Csikszentmihalyi states that: As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 49).

I concur with Csikzsentmihalyi’s description of the flow mode as evidenced above in my auto-ethnographic account of how I feel when I am singing in a performance “when the performance is going well or when I am ‘in the zone’ or ‘flowing’ that I am somewhere else, escaping life’s realities and existing in a different zone, having an experiential addictive moment” (Casey, 2018). I am reinforcing many of the elements that Csikszentmihalyi advises for optimal flow moments. I also particularly like his ideas that “concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 49) as this confirms my notions around singing allowing us to shape our identity and that singing promotes good health and wellbeing by strengthening the sense of self. Similarly to Perry “Sometimes the act of writing, itself, can be empowering for individuals and communities” (Perry, 2010, p. 37).

A traditional singer writing self-composed songs In addition to being an interpreter of folk and traditional songs I have written songs myself which I perform alongside the traditional material. While I see the value and expertise in being an exponent of traditional songs sometimes it does feel as if we,

75 the singers, have an enormous responsibility to pass the songs on and to continue in this one vein. It can feel like a burden at times as there is a lot of pressure put on people to stay true to the tradition. Hence it has been a difficult journey for me to establish myself as a writer of song both within and outside of the tradition. Also of course putting my own voice into the material I write and sing can sometimes, to myself at least, seem ‘self-indulgent’. While I have always attempted to connect the older songs to modern times, I often wonder how the reality of life in the 21st century, in general and as a woman, is exposed or mirrored when singing traditional songs. In saying this I do feel that in having absorbed traditional songs the craftwork and beauty inherent in them does stand to me as a great indicator of a good song. It should be noted that I think the rigours of learning an art form and being a practitioner of any art form is a privilege and an honour and I do not see this protracted learning period and development as restrictive but as something that has afforded me a deeply rich and creative life. As evidenced by Eavan Boland’s gallant poem, The Oral Tradition, the beauty to be found in a good song goes unsurpassed. Unravelling the depth of emotion in the songs which are as she says “layered like an amber” (Boland, 2011, pp. 80-83) is something I have the great privilege of giving witness to. Eavan Boland’s intensely evocative and poetic prose memoir Object Lessons is a meditation on how in Ireland, there can often be a contradiction in being a woman and a poet. Her acute sense of her poetic self, broadens outwards to illuminate the cultural values we uphold in Ireland, and often this can exclude the voice of a woman. Boland explores with great clarity, moral fortitude and courage her main theme of how the traditionally silent woman within poetry can claim ownership and authorship of her poetic life in modern Ireland. When I read this book it had a profound effect on me. I began to question everything about myself and about my own role within the tradition: I felt increasingly the distance between my own life, my lived experience and conventional interpretations of both poetry and the poet’s life. It was not exactly or even chiefly the recurrences of my world – a child’s face, the dial of a washing machine – were absent from the tradition, although they were. It was not even so much that I was a woman. It was that being a woman, I had entered into a life for which poetry has no name (Boland, 1996, p. 18).

I began to wonder if the tradition was claiming ownership over me or if I could claim ownership over it and the songs creatively. Historically there has been a long tradition of female singers in Ireland, such as Margaret Barry, Delia Murphy, Dolores Keane, Maura O’Connell, Mary Black, and Frances Black. Some of these women

76 inspired me and through their performances I saw a gap for myself for the future and for the potential to be a woman performer. I imagined that I could be like them. I could carve out this creative space for myself in performance. Their role modelling inspired me greatly to become a singer. In essence they gave me permission to perform. Young female singers can be inspired by powerful songstresses as role models. In terms of social activism, I also witnessed the strong element of social justice vocalised in the songs, “Irish Ways and Irish Laws”, “Ballad of Accounting” and “The World Turned Upside Down” particularly in the work of male singers such as Christy Moore and Dick Gaughan37. I wanted to express political opinions and so have tried for years to mould my own style of social activism through my singing, though I have found that this voice is often from a male perspective in Ireland. Female singers’ experience of this is somewhat different to Boland’s experience “I know now that I began writing in a country where the word woman and the word poet were almost magnetically opposed” (Boland, 1996, p. xi). There are many female role models for singers in Ireland but many of the female singers did not write songs as far as we know, so it took me a long time to feel brave enough and to give myself permission to write my own songs. Perhaps, like many women I felt an element of imposter syndrome, something that is common in a culture that is so male dominated. Before I look at the performance of social justice I will examine and give some background information to my creative process of song writing.

Self-composed songs Interrogating the approaches I have to song writing, I look at the songs “Home”, “Lovely Annie” and “Down in the Glen”. Song writing is a different skill entirely from being an interpretative singer of folk and traditional songs. This I have learned the hard way. The song-writing for me takes so much more work. “…a musician must learn the musical tradition, the notation system, the way instruments are played before she can think of writing a new song” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 8). Perhaps the song writing takes so much more work because my own practice of singing is easier to me. Playing the piano is an important aspect of my composition process and it has subsequently become more of a feature of my performances.

37 Dick Gaughan: Scottish guitar player, singer and songwriter known for his political protest songs. He played with the Scottish bands Boys of the Lough, Five Hand Reel and Clan Alba. Handful of Earth being a seminal recording in 1981 for folk music.

77 In an exploration of my creative song writing I note that I have always kept a diary. This diary or journal has morphed over the latter years into a blog on my website, karancasey.com. These writings often feed into the song material. Songs have often evolved from this process of journaling or musing, but not in any great analytical or disciplined fashion. I go about writing in different ways. I am also an avid consumer of fiction and poetry and I might take a line or two from a poet and work this up into a song idea. I will examine this process in more detail, first by exploring how I approach song writing and then reviewing the video of the performance of the songs in Dolan’s to tease out how the performance shaped the meaning of the songs and to examine how the songs connected with the audience.

“Home” On the album Two More Hours, I set the words of Paula Meehan’s38 powerful and evocative poem “Home”39 to music. Her book of poetry was absolutely enlightening for me. The poems sang themselves off the pages and I could see a way forward for a post-modern female voice in Ireland, similarly to Boland. To examine the creative process, I note that I tinkered around with the words of Meehan’s poem and tried singing different melodies and also played different tunes on the piano. I find that working musical hooks or ideas out on the piano is helpful sometimes, especially if I get stuck, as this can sometimes shift my thinking and help me to come up with an idea. There is no real eureka moment, mostly I find it is graft and work that gets me to the end result. In the earlier days I was not so sure of what I wanted to achieve, unlike Bob Dylan who “had grasped the idea of what kind of songs [he] wanted to write. [He] just didn’t know how to do it yet” (Dylan, 2004, p. 84). I am constantly referring back to the tradition, comparing my own writing with the traditional songs. It has taken me a long time to halt self-criticism. I have had to give myself permission to write and to just be myself. Meehan’s words were a catalyst for my own writing and song writing and I felt as if she ‘held my hand’ through her poetry in writing my own album “Two More

38 Paula Meehan: was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2013. She has published numerous collections of poetry including “Mysteries of the Home: A Selection of Poems,” in 1996. 39 For performance video of “Home” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/zLNooKWsE6o

78 Hours” which was the first album that I penned completely myself. It felt as if my songs and poems were there to guide me to new possibilities. As Paula herself says in her interview online with the American poet Michael Collier: “My poetry keeps me steady and safe” (Meehan, 2012). This resonated deeply with me and I have tried to emulate her courage and fearless voice of reasoning with a strong element of social justice in my own writing as evidenced in her poem “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks”. Again to reiterate what I said in chapter 2, much of the poetry and singing in Ireland connects and interweaves, there is a blending of the narratives. They combine to reconfirm or consolidate each other. Also in my search for a strong political female voice I found Paula Meehan and her art gave me permission to speak up on different issues. Female singers and the political male voices aforementioned gave me the courage to start singing and singing out politically. This element of role modelling becomes vital to the discussion on my role as a female carrier of politically charged songs in the next chapter.

Reflection on the performance through the arts practice lens In reflecting on the performance and reviewing the video I note I was comfortable by this stage in the gig in Dolan’s. “Home” was the fourth song in the set. I took the time to chat to the audience. I was fairly wound up for this performance because it was part of my arts practice PhD and it took me an amount of time to calm down. When I am sitting down at the piano I am more comfortable in talking, perhaps this is because as a woman I don’t feel the pressure of the audiences’ gaze as much and I can declare my musicianship in playing the piano. Not to say my musicianship isn’t played out while singing but playing the piano does allow me to communicate in a different way with the audience and the musicians. In my memory of the performance I felt as if I hadn’t made enough of a connection with the audience, but in reviewing the video recording I believe I did. I often use humour to relax both myself and hopefully the audience. They responded very well to my little chat about the children and to the song and its content. As noted in the earlier chapters I often worry about the talking more than the actual singing, partly because I have practised the singing and not the talking. In the past I often repeated the same lines every night during the introductions but this became very staid and so I decided ten years ago to force myself to say something different and to just be myself. Of course it is still a performance and so the notion of being yourself

79 is a tad disingenuous, but once I am relaxed then I find I can talk more freely. It has taken me a long time to get to this point. I began to think what it would be like for me to do a different type of performance and this fed into my 2nd PhD performance which I will discuss in detail in chapter 4.

“Lovely Annie” To examine another approach I have to song writing, I looked at the song called “Lovely Annie”40. Sometimes in composing I take a small hook or a couplet using those words to grow the whole song. In the song “Lovely Annie”, I only had the couplet, “Gone girl, gone girl” to start with. It was a full musical phrase. I just worked at it and enhanced this hook. I never know if this process will work or not but I trust that it will and the thing is to keep trying. Although this was very hard work emotionally it essentially materialised in a couple of days. “…in a flow experience we know how well we are doing. The musician hears right away whether the note played is the one” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 111). I was in a state of shock during the writing as it is about the stark loneliness I felt after my mother Anne died but the song-writing was a comfort to me. The process was a little different to the earlier example of “Home” in that I composed the whole song myself.

Exploring the performance In looking at the performance of “Lovely Annie”, I observe that I am happy to be at the piano. I found this song incredibly difficult to sing because of the content. Saying that my mother was gone was very hard. That is essentially why I play the piano on it as this helped to keep me safe. I found that concentrating on the piano almost distracted me from singing the lyrics. I still find it very hard to sing this song and not play the piano. After my mother died I reconstructed my life. I sat myself down and asked what it was that I wanted from life. Playing the piano and writing were the two main themes that kept cropping up. I had been a piano player until I was 27 but when I went on the road as a singer I found it very difficult to put myself forward as a piano player. The musicians I was working with were all very quick and I am slow to come up with

40 For performance video of “Lovely Annie” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/QZj_GKcUWrMá

80 parts. While I was able to hide this with the singing as I had an extensive repertoire I let the piano go. When I teach now I spend a lot of time trying to persuade the singing students to take up an instrument as it is exceptionally beneficial to singers if we can communicate chords and rhythm at a rehearsal. I am much more comfortable playing the piano on stage now and in fact it became a central part of my second PhD performance.

“Down in the Glen” The third process that I have started to utilise in my writing is to take a melody from the tradition and to make up my own words. This has been done for centuries in Ireland, for example Dominic Behan used the tune of “Roddy McCorley” with new words to create his song “Sean South” (Behan, 1960). I took the traditional tune of “Tá Dhá Ghabhairín Bhuí Agam” and slowed it down while I was playing the piano. Again I was angling for an idea and just trying things out or playing around. I then added the chorus. This I believe is an example of a more mature song-writer. Nowadays I am easier with the process and I discard words and phrases easily. In the past I would cling to everything I wrote and try to make it work. I was afraid to throw anything away as I thought I would never be able to make anything up again. This process mirrors my interpretative singing in the earlier days, when I would cling to just a couple of songs and always sing those in public. It took years for me to become confident with new material. In essence this is proof or evidence to myself that it takes years of working within the domain and area of expertise, years of absorption and storing the embodied knowledge before you can really be comfortable in art making. Csikszentmihalyi quotes the inventor Jacob Rabinow “…a good creative person is well trained. So he has first of all an enormous amount of knowledge in that field. Secondly, he tries to combine ideas, because he enjoys writing music or enjoys inventing. And finally, he has the judgement to say, ‘This is good, I’ll pursue this further’” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 50). “Down in the Glen”41 is a song I wrote for the centenary celebrations for the Easter Rising42 in 1916. I was asked to perform at Liberty Hall in Dublin. In discussions

41 For performance video of “Down in the Glen” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/qwwwZn9X7d0 42 The Easter Rising: Rebellion against British rule in Ireland that occurred during Easter week in 1916.

81 with Theo Dorgan, who is a poet I greatly admire and who was also performing at this concert, the seed of the idea of writing a song for Julia Grennan and Elizabeth O’Farrell stepped out into the air. Julia Grennan was the nurse who stayed behind in the GPO with James Connolly43 when he was injured and Elizabeth O’Farrell surrendered the flag with Pádraig Pearse outside the GPO but both women are not as well-known as the male heroes. Myself and Theo had been discussing at length how to include the women more. When Theo said “I wonder what Julia was feeling as Elizabeth, the love of her life, left the GPO”, everything fell into place (Dorgan, 2016). So there is often a messy, imbricated approach to my song writing. Many of my creative strands folded into the making of this song: the traditional song structure; the new chorus and chord changes on the piano; my knowledge and love of Irish history; my need to include women in the storytelling and to find a place for women within the narrative of traditional song and my strong need to write and find a creative place for myself. They all roll into the one creative entity for me. In reflecting on my journaling I see that the song went through many permutations before arriving at its final form. I tortured myself essentially for a good year before it was finished. Obviously Csikszentmihalyi is correct in his statement “…the person must learn the rules and the content of the domain, as well as the criteria of selection, the preferences of the field” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 47). I have absorbed much of the Irish musical tradition and so I can draw from this well of information when song writing. A constant feature of traditional song is that songs are revamped or put into a different local setting with different lead characters being added.

I am very pleased with the three songs I have written now. The “Down in the Glen” one for the 1916 commemoration. I decided after the practice with Donald and Sean Óg to put that song back into the top list. They liked it a lot and when Donald played it on the piano well it sounded much better. Sean Óg really likes it. I am still struggling with the language of it as I feel it is a bit old fashioned, but when I played it in America myself on the piano it went down very well. (See Appendix for song lyrics).

43 James Connolly and Padraig Pearse were two of the leaders of the Easter Rising and were stationed in the general post office (G.P.O) in Dublin throughout the events.

82 While I like most of the lyrics I am not so sure of the line, “I’ll put the stars out there for to dress your lovely hair” as I love that line and I’m not sure if it fits in here…Anyway it’s back on the list. I tried to keep writing and writing to make things work. A lot of this thinking came out of a book I read called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (Cameron, 1992). I was desperate to get writing in a different manner. Someone suggested this book to me, I can’t remember who. Anyhow I did all of the exercises in this book over a three-month period last year and it really helped me to get writing. I was kind of stuck. The book sets out exercises to help with the writing process. The main one is to write ‘morning pages’, and it gives a set of ideas to help initiate this process such as writing about your past, time travelling and writing imaginary lives. I got up at 6am every day and wrote my ‘morning pages’. This was very helpful in rehabilitating my artistic self. It also gave me the courage to call myself a writer. I loved it. In the section on listening I particularly liked the line “Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down” (Cameron, 1992, p. 229) and the importance of halting the self-critic and working against perfectionism was especially instructive. What I found very difficult was keeping the ‘artist’s date’. The suggestion in the book is to keep two hours in the week for yourself and to map out this time to do whatever you want. I found this very difficult and kept missing it. I also found the advice to NOT read for some periods of time practically impossible and I definitely cheated in this part. But the crucial element of minding my artist self as I would a child was the real gift in this book. I began to be kinder to myself. I was also stuck on the same old chords on the piano and everything just sounded lonely and isolated and ponderous which happens I think with the piano as it is as vast as the ocean and so you can get caught down in the depths. I was spending too much time in minor keys. So trying something out with my creative writing really got me away from all of this depressive thinking and in a way again forced my hand by giving me objectives every day in the writing. I wrote from memory, from feelings, from pictures, from time off! It is a great tool I think to get the writer writing. So in the heel of the hunt I loved all of the writing but I became a bit more focused and kept asking myself: “Karan what do you want to write?” At the beginning I just wrote and wrote as that is what the

83 book recommended. So I did. It’s a bit like Maura O’Connell saying "just sing" (O'Connell, 2018). So you do (Casey, 2016).

Exploring the performance As you can see from the performance video, after all the conversations about the piano I decided not to play the piano in the gig. This was mostly because the piano arrangement had become more complex and because Sean Óg and Donald had come up with a more elaborate chord structure especially in the third verse. I am still nervous about these chord changes and so opted out of playing. As already stated I wasn’t totally convinced about this song when I composed it first but in rehearsals I was persuaded and encouraged by Niall Vallely, Niamh Dunne and Sean Óg to sing it, particularly when Niamh said, “I love it, are you mad, I would sing that” (Dunne, 2017). There is something about the world of solitary composition and then the camaraderie and the collaborative nature of rehearsals and performing that I have always relied upon. The opinions of these musicians and our relationship created through the music matter greatly to me (Bartleet, 2009, p. 722).

Questionnaire Another methodological approach which I decided to use is an audience questionnaire. I chose this type of questionnaire to collect data from the audience because I wanted an immediate reaction from the listeners after the performance. In setting the questions I tried not to direct or push the audience’s answers to fit my philosophy. Some of the answers challenged my thinking and some supported it and it was all interesting to reflect upon. (See Appendix p.157) The questionnaire revealed some interesting insights which I will summarise here. In total 32 out of 35 questionnaires were completed. The first two questions dealt with the audience’s attendance at music events.

84

The percentage of audience members who regularly attend concerts is relatively high although a large proportion of them don’t attend singing concerts. This confirms Niamh Dunne’s earlier analysis of her experience of a traditional and folk performance being weighted towards instrumental music cited in chapter 2 (Dunne, 2019). I am taking it for granted that the people attending the concerts are mostly fans of folk and traditional music as that is my fan base. The fact that many of the audience were studying traditional music at the Academy in UL might have had a bearing on their responses.

85 In answer to question 3 focusing on people’s initial response to the performance, I was slightly surprised by all of the compliments and I’m not saying this to be self-congratulatory. I had a memory of myself being nervous and not communicating very well on the night but after reading the survey and looking back on the audio-visual recording the concert went down better than I remembered, giving credence of course to the detailing of and research behind the performance. Many people used the phrase “Amazing” or saying they “thoroughly enjoyed it” and it was “fantastic” and “interesting” being a term that was utilised a lot. Many commented on the synergy between myself, the band and the audience and how original and entertaining it was. I do take this type of gig for granted in some ways as I have been doing them for over twenty years so I was challenged by the responses. One person did say that it was “slow to start but built up” which I agreed with as I often start with a medium tempo song and try to build a set rather than having all guns blazing at the start. I feel it allows myself and the audience to get to know each other in a more relaxed manner, relaxed being a word many respondents used in the survey. Also if the first few songs are a bit more sparse and gentle, it gives us a place to grow the performance and on a more practical level it gives the soundperson time to sort the instrumentation out on the board and to find levels more organically. The 4th question which asked “What insight (if any) did this performance give you into the workings of being a creative singer?” garnered a variety of responses. I had worried slightly about putting the word ‘creative’ into the question as I thought that might send people down one particular route but on the other hand I wanted to gather some thoughts on what people thought the words ‘creative’ and ‘singer’ meant for them. Two people responded by stressing “the importance of having a band you trust” and “the overlapping of instruments and harmonies.” I would concur completely. Having Sean Óg, Niamh and Niall there was a constant source of strength for myself on the day as I knew I could rely on them and that they were very supportive in terms of the research. Niamh’s sister Bríd had just completed a PhD and so she understood greatly the work involved as did Sean Óg, and Niall was in the middle of a PhD so he really understood! One person said “There are no boundaries, find the right people to collaborate with and you can create anything”. The overwhelming response though was about the “work” involved being “challenging and pushing boundaries”. People associated creativity with “requiring talent and dedication”. Some of the responses made an association between the words

86 “dedication” and “work”. This perhaps was because many of the audience were musicians themselves or music students and so understood intimately the amount of work involved in performing. Also perhaps the use of the term “workings” in the question was suggestive. Some commented on the “voice being an instrument in its own right” and about the originality and creativity being sought through the performance; the “improvisation (I assume), at times using voice as non-verbal instrument (relatively unusual), playing with timbres (light, strident, range variation, etc.)”. And some noted “the importance of passion and…having an interest in the repertoire” and others mentioned “love of the art”. The next question asked how people would describe my style of singing. The majority, twenty to be exact, described my singing as “traditional” and most of these clarified this using terms such as “mixed with folk,” or “bluesy” and “purposely experimental”. Some described my style in more abstract terms utilising phrases such as “emotional”, “empowering” and “soulful”. The overall impression seems to be that my singing is perceived as traditional and folk and ends up stretching those boundaries. Again I would concur. Many people responded to the question about whether they felt empowered with a strong “yes”, twenty-four people saying yes and citing songs such as the “Man of God”, “Ballad of Accounting”, “King’s Shilling” and the “one about your mother” “Lovely Annie”, as being very moving and also Paula Meehan’s poem “Home” being cited twice as empowering especially for the women. It’s interesting that I did speak about these songs in this context before singing and perhaps that shapes people’s approach to the song during the performance. But the song that garnered the most mention from this question was “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye”, with one person saying it was “a phenomenal interpretation which got to the core of these two powerful songs” (“The Fiddle and the Drum”) and one woman said “it made her proud to be Irish and to be a woman”. Three people said “not really” and “no” and three others didn’t answer this section, one person saying they didn’t understand the question and one who described themselves as a drummer, said she/he couldn’t remember the names of the songs but “yes” they felt empowered, which made me smile. The penultimate question which asked if I made a connection with the audience was a resounding “yes” from all respondents. I was slightly taken aback with this as mentioned before I was nervous and felt I hadn’t done the best gig ever, but I am probably hard on myself. I was delighted with this response and in particular the reasons

87 for it. Most people cited my “easy relaxed nature” which of course is not what is on the inside, but I do try to present a good front. In fairness to myself after the first few songs I usually do calm down. Many talked about my “warm, disarming personality” or describing it as “we were part of the performance,” one insightfully describing my presence as “the usual Irish gig connection: jokes, singing along, casual”. I would agree but I’m not too sure that my singing or presence or performance could be described as casual. Many talked about “telling good stories and letting us into your space”, “use of humour, and speaking directly to the crowd made me feel very included in the experience. As if we were in your living room, listening (very primal)”. I felt that the questionnaire was a useful exercise and it triangulated my own perceptions. Many of the findings confirmed what I already thought about my performance, for instance that it comprises a mixture of genres but that primarily I’m seen as a folk singer. I was surprised by the song “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” being particularly noted in terms of empowerment, perhaps this was because of the potent political lyrics. I found the questionnaire valuable in challenging my own perceptions of my performance. I didn’t feel I was necessarily connecting with people in the way I wanted but the questionnaire responses suggested that this was one of the strongest elements of my performance. To be honest I have worked hard over the years to try to connect with my audience. It is my most vulnerable area during performance. I think it is vital and I never take it for granted that people have come out and paid in to hear me. I feel a tremendous privilege in that. And I have become more relaxed with getting the audience to sing along. This is my favourite thing now and I believe it speaks to my core notion of building a community and love through singing and the arts.

The performance of social justice In this section I look at my performance of social justice. I frame this discussion through my performances of some of the more politically charged songs that were performed at the first PhD performance in Dolan’s of Limerick. I will be looking in particular at the anti-war songs, “The King’s Shilling” and “Man of God”; a song on the issue of social class “Ballad of Accounting”; and I will revisit “The Rocks of Bawn” and “Hollis Brown” under this microscope.

Anti-war songs: “The King’s Shilling” and “Man of God” (See Appendix for full song lyrics)

88 “The King’s Shilling”44 is a Scottish anti-war anthem sung from the woman’s point of view written by Iain Sinclair. It is a relatively new song, composed in the 1970s. I have been singing this song for twenty years. I sing it at every performance. The use of the term “King Shilling” positions the song in a historical context although it doesn’t specify a particular war or historical period. This permits me the liberty of utilising the song’s implicit anti-war message in relation to different present-day conflicts, for example during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have often used my spoken introduction to make a more explicit anti-war statement and I invite people to rethink their attitudes towards war. The song tells of the plight of a poor soldier and how he took the ‘King’s Shilling’. The term to take the King’s Shilling refers to a practice where unsuspecting men were often tricked or pressganged into service in the British Army or Royal Navy. We are told at the very start that this woman was left struggling to bring up the ‘bairnes twa’ (two children). Our sympathies are elicited as the writer is focusing our attention in the first verse on the plight of the woman left at home with the two children. This is juxtaposed with the air of ‘jubilation’ surrounding the soldiers marching off to war in the lines: The pipes did play as he marched along And the soldiers sang out a battle song

As the song moves on, the mood shifts and the reality and the futility of war is emphasised in the line: And the shilling didn’t seem much worth the war And this point is again stressed when the last chorus changes to: Take the King’s shilling and you’ll die in war

The song puts across its message in quite a subtle way. There is the potential for people to be lured in with the happy melody into a false sense of security, before the song reveals its real intentions. It’s a contrast in the set to more direct anti-war songs such as “Man of God”. I like having both approaches as this allows for a broader discussion on the subject.

44 For performance video of “King’s Shilling” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/6WZVvRxIMlU

89 In this performance as in most of the performances of this song I invite the audience to sing the chorus. I don’t have many songs with a chorus and this is a simple chorus for people to sing. Many sang along. I believe that this helps to build community and create a connection with the audience. In involving the audience in political song it seems to strengthen the message because the audience appear to be giving their vocal assent. In this experience a potent political atmosphere can be created. This will be discussed further in Chapter 4. “Man of God”45 is from America and was written by Eliza Gilkyson but is distilled through my own Irish accent and folk sensibilities as discussed in chapter 2. As evidenced in the performance video my song choices are varied. I don’t mind where the song comes from as long as I can identify with it emotionally and as long as I believe it to be a good song. In terms of my singing it is a song in the set that illustrates my jazz and blues background. I would hope that by singing provocative political songs such as “Man of God” that I am engaging with the audience in a deeply emotional and evocative manner. The song is asking the listener to reflect on fundamentalist viewpoints of religion and how they do not serve humanity well and indeed contradict the basic tenets behind most religions. This is a particular call to Christian fundamentalists who consistently defend their warring by claiming that God is on their side and it speaks to this community by utilizing biblical references. Jesus said blessed are the meek, Jesus said you’ve got to turn the other cheek Jesus said help the poor and the weak If he lived today he’d be a liberal freak

While the song was written with president George Bush in mind it could have a relevance to fundamentalist leaders worldwide. I also really love the strong provocative anti-war theme. Metaphor serves this song well. As noted in chapter 2 and in the context of traditional song, much of traditional repertoire relies on metaphor and on the metaphors that have built up meaning within our cultures and communities. Here Gilkyson

45 For performance video of “Man of God” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/WcDoSLIiI0k

90 illustrates her contempt for the George Bush administration by building a picture of him as a ‘cowboy’: Well the cowboy came from out of the west With his snakeskin boots and his bullet proof vest A gang of goons and his big war chest Fortunate son he was doubly blessed

Joni Mitchell also uses metaphor in her use of the imagery of the fiddle and drum in her anti-war song “The Fiddle and Drum” ending with the line: we have come to fear the beating of your drum She equates the fiddle with peace and the drum with war. This song performed in Dolan’s really resonated with the audience, as evidenced in the questionnaire answers and I believe it is because of the poetic use of metaphor that we perhaps have in our genetic memory. In Lakoff and Johnson’s seminal book Metaphors We Live By they examine ‘meaning’ in Western philosophy and linguistics and work from the premise that metaphor is not just a construct of poetic language but an active conceptual system by which we live our lives and which helps us to find and define meaning in our lives. “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). They provide many examples of how pervasive metaphor is, not just in our languages but in our thoughts and actions and how our lives are influenced significantly by the metaphors we use to explain complex phenomena. Examples are “Happy is up; sad is down” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 14). Conscious is up; unconscious is down. Health and life are up; sickness and death are down. “Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and cultural experience” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 14). They further examine experiential ‘Bases of Metaphors’ “In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 19). In the PhD classes it fascinated me when we discussed metaphor and also mused on how in Ireland some of our cultural metaphors are different. The movement back is often equated with something regressive whereas in Ireland, we would equate going ‘back’ home as a positive. When I was discussing this later with Niall Vallely and continuing my narrative enquiry with him, he suggested that in Irish the term ag dul siar means both going back and going west and that we like the idea of going to the West of

91 Ireland emphasising the cultural evolution of metaphor to which Lakoff and Johnson refer to. Lakoff and Johnson go on to state that “The reason we have focussed so much on metaphor is that it unites reason and imagination” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 193). This sounds like singing to me. When I am singing there is a fusion of my reasoning, particularly engaging with the texts and meaning and my imagination. I am utilising Lakoff and Johnson’s theory here to back up my own sense and experience of song. I meld the thinking, the emotion and the music all into one performance.

“Ballad of Accounting” A song in the performance that addresses the issue of social class is “Ballad of Accounting”46. Ewan MacColl’s searing protest song asking us, the people, to recognise how we construct society not the governments or rulers of the day. I am hopeful that the listener could engage in their own heuristic reflections? I have always growled the lines: Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best? Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?

In my performance of this song I utilise sarcasm greatly as evidenced in my tonal quality, again reinforcing the performativity of my political intent. And again metaphor is utilised by MacColl in equating our construction of society with building a city and comparing the passing of our lives with the passing of a day. As evidenced by the performance, the band are all highly energised in this piece. Perhaps it is a relief to get to the end of the gig! But I think this punchy hard- driving material gains a lot of its energy from Sean Óg’s pulsating guitar and sparkling instrumental ambition from Niamh and Niall gives us all a moment to really let fly. I have always included this kind of repertoire in my performances. It gives me the opportunity to approach emotions and issues from a different musical perspective.

“If only you would just sing and not talk” Performatively I draw or attune the audience’s attention to a specific element within the performance, or to a specific line within the song. Over time I have learned that if I growl or bark or rage my way through the whole song then people can almost

46 For performance video of “Ballad of Accounting” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/Itdl6hLNou0

92 feel ‘assaulted’ by the song and not moved. I listened myself for years to the singing of Dick Gaughan and found that he often annunciates or ‘growls’ some of the lines but not all of them. Growling is stressing the words and as a vocal effect brings a guttural annunciation to particular lines. I definitely feel that I have to choose my moments within the evening to talk about social justice issues. I don’t feel that a whole evening of my ‘preaching’ would work and that it sometimes alienates members of the audience. In fact I know this from my deep experiential history of singing social justice songs. When discussing this aspect of my performance with Sean Óg he confirmed my notion that singing the political idea is easier for people: “It’s funny when you…put it [the politics] into a song they don't feel as offended by it” (Graham, 2019). Looking back on my memories and journaling them I remember how one man said to me at a gig “you are such a pretty girl if only you would just sing and not talk”. Another told me “to go home and sort out the problems between the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland before coming over here and telling us (Americans) how to live our lives”. This comment came during the Iraq war when I was singing anti-war songs.

Documentation of activism In my role as artist-as-researcher I am reflecting greatly on my performances during auto-ethnographical writings. I am mindful of my own stance while navigating the boundaries between my work as a researcher, performer and as a social justice activist. In many ways as in life itself these areas overlap and so the boundaries can become blurred. I have been spurred on by other readings that promote the use of the personal narratives as research to support my enquiries: Personal narratives propose to understand a self or some aspect of self of a life as it intersects with cultural context, connect to other participants as co- researchers, and invite readers to enter the author’s world and to use what they learn there to reflect on (Ellis, et al., 2011, p. 46).

One such piece of auto-ethnographic writing examines how my campaigning and performance of the song “The King’s Shilling” merged. I posted this piece on my Facebook page (See Appendix) to advertise a benefit that I was doing in America on my March tour 2017. It was a benefit run by Irish musicians in America who raised money for the American Civil Liberties Union and we were protesting Donald Trump’s treatment of immigrants. The activism across the country raised $35,000 in one day. I was moved enough on the social justice issue to take action but also in reflecting on my

93 own recent performances I felt I needed to do something more and to speak out more coherently on the issue. This auto-ethnographic piece is an example of the intertwining of research, activism and performance.

“Hollis Brown” Arrangement (See appendix for lyrics) In choosing “Hollis Brown”47 I was looking for a song that had musical punch as well as a political one. There is a strand in my repertoire that relates to the modern political folk song as exemplified by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Ewan MacColl. These song writers have had an important influence on the revival of Irish music since the 1960s particularly through the work of Christy Moore and Andy Irvine. Songs such as “Pastures of Plenty” and “Ballad of Accounting” sat comfortably alongside more historical Irish songs like “Shamrock Shore” and “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”. All of the above male singers had a profound influence on my own singing. The instrumental arrangements were an important feature of these songs reiterating what I noted earlier about my relationship with my fellow instrumentalists. In “Hollis Brown” the initial guitar arrangement draws more strongly from the American influence of Country blues. But after five verses it shifts dramatically to a more overtly Irish style that is more reminiscent of a guitar style used in Irish traditional dance music. Contrasting this arrangement with the performance of “The Rocks of Bawn” one can see two different approaches to conveying a similar political message: a fast rhythmic arrangement as opposed to the stark slow poignant one. This is important in the context of an overall performance and shaping the set in order to engage the audience in a variety of ways. What the two songs “Rocks of Bawn” and “Hollis Brown” do have in common thematically is the issue of poverty. “The Rocks of Bawn” is a traditional narrative that is deeply metaphorical, very descriptive of moments, the bad boss, the bad food, the horse eating better than himself, the land being bad. These elements all point to its political intent. The same could be said of “Hollis Brown” again describing vividly a human situation of a contemporary event, the lack of food, the bad land, the starving family, the terrible injustice of poverty, allowing them both to carry more weight today than perhaps a more overtly political song. In many ways both of these songs are fine

47 For performance video of “Hollis Brown” see attached memory stick or visit https://youtu.be/AA5A9-vg-4U

94 examples of political songs that draw us into the human condition of poverty and allow the listener to feel and embody the story themselves. I am constantly looking and sourcing good songs that I can utilise creatively for my performances. There is a problem sometimes with polemic political songs in that sometimes they go out of date or out of fashion and so I constantly have to revamp this repertoire to make sure I am keeping up with the times. Sometimes the best songs transcend their time and the specific events they are addressing. Bob Dylan’s song “Hollis Brown” is to me a quintessential folk song, speaking to the issue of poverty and calling to task the society that allows this type of poverty to overwhelm people’s lives, a rejection of the status quo. It speaks to the despair and ‘stolen’ dignity that comes with poverty. This is an incredibly evocative and provocative song. “Music is able to connect people through emotional evocation that in certain context may transcend language, economic and other social barriers” (Leavy, 2010, p. 123). “Hollis Brown” is a social commentary on poverty today. “Liminality confers ritual powers on the novitiate, and similarly song can be seen to have a certain licentiousness to it, or subversive qualities that are ‘immune’ to the usual rules, social norms or hierarchies” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 41). In other words, I can sing what I cannot say or what is socially taboo. If I can step into the shoes of the poverty stricken character in the song, imagine how that would feel, embody that story and reimagine it for today’s circumstances, then I can create a world for the audience where they too can connect with this emotional performance and thus be transported to gain an understanding of the reality of poverty and perhaps be moved to do something about it. This is what art attempts to do. I am cognisant of the fact that not everyone takes the same understanding from the performances. In essence the audience members bring their own judgements and value systems to the performance and this creates its own experience. Sometimes in the past I felt as if I didn’t have the right to be singing about poverty as I wasn’t poor myself but now I stand over these songs with authority and sing away. We can all fight for a better world. Just because I have money does not mean that I turn my back on the poor and ignore poverty. The most vulnerable and how they are treated are an indictment of our society. “The results of creativity enrich the culture and so they indirectly improve the quality of all of our lives” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 10).

95

Conclusion In this chapter I explored various issues surrounding my first PhD performance. I looked at my creative process concentrating on my song writing and giving insight and information into how the songs evolved. I then viewed the songs through the arts practice lens of reflecting on the performances as documented by a video recording. I examined the data from a questionnaire that I distributed at this performance. It enhanced my understanding of my own performance and was useful in gaining insights into people’s reaction to it. I utilised some data from ethnographic interviews and examined how my social activism, research and performance are related to each other. The other important theme in this chapter was how I addressed the issues of social justice in the performance. Songs that provide a balance to the social justice issues or perhaps give a wider emotional spectrum include: “Lovely Annie” a song I wrote for my mother; “Hold On” for compassion; Jimmy Crowley and Pat Daly’s traditional song “The Doll in Cash’s Window” and Ger Wolfe’s “Curra Road” for joy. This mixture of song themes is a reflection of the panorama of life, the politics being one aspect of my life. Of course all of the songs are for my deep love and the sheer joy of music. I agree with Dick Gaughan that all songs are a kind of love song, for humanity. I do believe that the words and performance promote compassion and are powerful forces of evocation and illumination into the human condition of love. The performance space that I have been afforded through my singing is a really sacred area for me. It mirrors the smallest quietest part of myself that is often very vulnerable and afraid but it allows me to grow tall, it allows me on the good days to explore these issues that are so important to me as a person and as a singer, it allows me to be become the woman I want to be. These notions might seem too high and mighty or too lofty a world to live by but they have sustained me so far. This is a far-reaching creative worldview and indeed it has been the philosophical underpinning of all of my inquiries into singing.

96 Chapter 4: I Walked into My Head

“Truth is the daughter of time The springs of justice rose up to rhyme Let’s take the road less travelled through this stormy weather Let’s rise up and stand together Sister I am here for you.” Karan Casey (extract from I Walked into My Head)

Chapter 4 focuses on an exploration of the second performance, a new piece that I composed called I Walked into My Head. This was constructed as a new style of performance highlighting many of the themes that had emerged and were important to me during the research. Once again I will be referring to the ethnographic interviews with other musicians and drawing on the data from an illuminating panel discussion that took place after the second performance. I also discuss a feminist movement I helped to found called FairPlé which advocated for equality for female performers, as an example of my activism and its importance in my performance. I view how my own creative female voice is expressed through my singing and song-writing and ultimately my performances and how they have evolved to reflect this new clear feminist voice. I think it is very important for a true understanding of the 2nd performance called I Walked into My Head that I contextualise and examine how the research and my activism affected my performances. My need for equality as a female performer and my campaigning as a social feminist activist featured more in my work as an artist and especially in my second PhD performance. As argued throughout this thesis my experience of song performance is much informed by the social activism I promote and as examined in chapter 3 my work on colonialism and the anti-war movement is also expressed in my song choices. Firstly, I explore the role of female singers in relation to social activism, centring my explorations around the writings of Angela Davis, Tríona Ní Shíocháin and again through the arts practice lens of my experience of my own song performances. Then I look at some elements of the FairPlé movement that pertain to my performance. I then examine the performance I Walked into My Head. I look at my creative process; examining extensively how I prepared for this performance; looking at the challenges that arose in writing the piece, how I utilised my experiential intelligences and acumen to develop solutions to these challenges, utilising good judgement and listening skills in choosing what songs to sing and what words to speak. I explore new

97 areas of performance that I developed to overcome issues and exploring how my campaigning had an effect on the piece as a whole. As in the previous chapters I lean heavily on my auto-ethnographic journals and my experiential research as well as the interviews I conducted with other performers. After the performance of I Walked into My Head myself and Sandra Joyce organised a panel discussion with the audience which illuminated many interesting points about my practice and which challenged my perception of the overall performance, again giving me the tremendous privilege of being informed by others within and outside of my own profession.

Feminism In my opinion the African proverb “If you educate a woman you educate a family or a nation” (Kwegyir-Aggrey, 1999) is correct. One of the key methods of educating people or passing on subversive information has been singing songs that express the longing and desires of the oppressed group. Patricia Leavy cites Jones discussing torch singing and how this medium “involves expressing the suffering of unrequited love as experienced by women, which Holman Jones views as an inherently resistive medium (and act) in which female singers call forth gendered experiences…Torch singers tell their listeners stories so that they may come to a new understanding and envision a new ‘set of possibilities’” (Leavy, 2010, p. 129). In Ireland historically we have always sung our woes, we grieve and wail through the medium of song attested to by the thousands of songs we have for many political and cultural events in Ireland. To take one example in Terry Moylan’s book The Age of Revolution: In the Irish Song Tradition 1776-1815, there are 157 songs with musical notation, 27 poems and 25 more musical notations just for this one timeframe, albeit the monumental historical events of the 1798 Rebellion and the Napoleonic era (Moylan, 2000). What I explore now is my own role in this context as a woman. My ideas on feminism have been expressed through many of the songs I have sung in the past. “Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes” (Masseth, 2017). For example, in singing “The King’s Shilling” by performatively imagining the plight of the poor woman I am identifying with this woman by singing out her voice, her woes, her reality in the song and in that expression giving her life experience credence and value.

98 Singing and activism Texts that I explored were from the context of women’s singing and activism as I was drawn to deepen this area within my practice. Ní Shíocháin and Davis paint a picture of female singers’ roles in relation to social activism in different ways. To reiterate what I said in Chapter 1 and to build on their arguments: as an arts practice researcher and as a singer I am arguing that singing songs to encourage social consciousness or raise awareness around issues is in and of itself the performance of social justice. As referenced earlier Davis talks about the relationship between social justice and the arts. To be an effective social justice activist I partially agree with Davis that “Art may encourage a critical attitude and urge its audience to challenge social conditions, but it cannot establish the terrain of protest by itself” (Davis, 1998, p. 113). I believe singing social justice songs is a protest and I agree with Ní Shíocháin that singing the songs can enact societal change: This moment of potentiality was of significance not just for the song-composer, such as Máire Bhuí, who wrought contemporary political meaning out of the traditional play-sphere of song, but also the listener and the singer, who courted new ways of thinking and feeling through song (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 3).

I also agree with Davis that sometimes “there must be an organised political structure capable of functioning as a channel for transforming individual complaint into effective collective protest” (Davis, 1998, p. 113). Living or working creatively in male dominated arenas has proven exceptionally difficult for many female performers and this is what urged me on politically to become one of the founding members of FairPlé. I felt more needed to be done to enact real social change for female performers. FairPlé is a movement organised to promote equality and fairness for female performers within the Irish and folk music community. Before I examine some aspects of the FairPlé movement though I will take a deeper look at the performance of social justice through the work of Davis and Ní Shíocháin. Ní Shíocháin builds upon the work of among others Glassie and Lord and some of the main philosophers from the early 20th century. I began to reframe my own singing in this light, particularly the oral aspect of performance. Lord and his ideas about composing or reworking the poems or songs were very helpful to me in my second performance and also illuminating in my discoveries and reflections on my talking during a performance. I often work from a couple of formulas and elaborate upon them. As reconfirmed by Niamh Dunne “we fall into the certain patterns of the stage patter,

99 we fall into the certain patterns of first chorus verse chorus break verse chorus” (Dunne, 2019). This is correct as my talking or direct speech to the audience is an example of taking a formula and recreating it, similarly with the reworking of the traditional songs and indeed the song-poems in my second performance as they don’t always follow an exact pattern. I improvise and riff on the words and the music often because of my reactional and responsive relationship to the audience, to the musicians and to myself during the actual performance. The oral song tradition by its very nature and recreation of the songs or ‘reworking’ (Ó Súilleabháin, 1981) is problematic for academia as it challenges the status quo. The oral song is difficult to contain as it can change with each performance, therein lies its beauty also. With such changes or reworking and recreation it can be relegated as a secondary source, the implication being it can’t be trusted as a primary ‘traditional’ academic source of data. I argue that bringing yourself and your emotions and feelings to your singing is of value to us all as human beings. Feminist songs also challenge greatly the status quo: …orality is a key feminist issue for academics, because it can be conveniently stifled as ‘unsubstantiated’ scholarship, but also because it poses a genuine challenge to our reconstruction of history and to the very stories modern Western society tells itself about itself (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 10).

In Ireland today, feminist thinking that women should be treated as equal in all aspects of our lives, has been informed by female stories and one campaign title “In Her Shoes”48 demonstrates this. It could even be stated that without these stories being aired in the mainstream and social media the referendum to repeal the ban on abortion in the Irish Constitution in 2018 would not have been passed. The stories became a vital component of the campaign. The narratives and the stories of the repeal the 8th campaign had a profound effect on my own thinking. I tried to write songs on the issue and the music started to take a different shape particularly in my own piece I Walked into My Head.

48 In Her Shoes – “Women of the Eighth is a grassroots movement started by Erin Darcy on January 14th, 2018. In its run up to the referendum to Repeal the 8th amendment on May 25th, 2018 - the page grew to a following of 115k people, and an organic reader reach of 4 million people per week. This movement is changing the conversation, bringing the focus back to the central person at hand - those that need access to safe terminations” (Darcy, 2019).

100 In my reflections I began to wonder when I sing older traditional songs that venerate Irish male heroes, where is the place for women here. I have long argued that I inhabit the voice of the powerless, both male and female, and in doing so I sing out against oppression. I also recognise the power of the imagination at play here. Honouring the heroes of the past has been for me a way of speaking out against colonialism and racism today. I see this as the long and time-honoured convention of traditional and folk singers. Davis states that “in the works of Gertrude Rainey and Bessie Smith, blues song represents the collective woes of a community, along with the determination to conquer them”. She goes on to qualify this more by adding “But, at the same time it acquires a specifically female meaning, furnishing women with one of the rare vehicles through which their agonies, joys, and aspirations may be expressed” (Davis, 1998, p. 135). This concurs with Ní Shíocháin’s assertion that “Song was a realm of possibility. It was this power of song that Máire Bhuí harnessed in her engagement with contemporary politics during her own lifetime” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 3).

Is this female current of identity so strong that when I perform do I performatively ‘get away with more’ when I sing the political songs of old from Ireland? Am I the embodiment of oppression and therefore not seen as such a threat to the status quo when I sing revolutionary songs or songs that have a potent political bent? I don’t believe that I am the embodiment of oppression and certainly do not feel this way when I am on the stage, in fact I usually grow into the woman I want to be on stage but I often wonder how seriously my opinion is taken. The line “My heart is always trembling.” in the song “Rocks of Bawn” often reminds me of this. I am in a liminal space when I sing and often very vulnerable during this moment in time but mostly I seem to grow into the space and overcome my fears and come out the other end feeling empowered. I never feel worse after singing in fact I always feel better. But sometimes when I speak up, things aren’t so good (Casey, 2019).

We have an idea in Ireland and perhaps elsewhere that the songs are a commentary on current or historical events but I believe that they can also be a vehicle to influence if not direct events. I argue that the singing of such songs can be a political act and creates potent political agency within the community. “Song is the

101 quintessential play-sphere through which new ideas and motivations can be generated” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 23). As mentioned before Ni Shíocháin discusses the idea that you can sing what you cannot say or what is socially taboo. (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 41). Or of course you can choose to act it out. Davis cites Alberta Hunter’s description of Bessie Smith “In full Empress regalia, she was bold, beautiful, outrageously out of line, and impossible to forget” (Davis, 1998, p. 137). This is what art can do, it can create new worlds of understanding for people, enhance our notions of one another and hopefully promote compassion. It becomes a compelling political act. The songs allow women this moment in time to be ourselves, to truly say what we want and need from the world and to dream or imagine a better world for us all. No subject is taboo if you look at traditional song material; while the voice of the woman can seem muted, she is there if you look deeply. It also permits the audience to feel or to experience these emotions and ideas. Songs in a performance can sanction female voices who are often ignored or undervalued in our societies: “…the songs of Máire Bhuí tell a different story, one of an illiterate woman who through the mastery of song composition would become a central idea maker in the politics of her own society” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 19). Davis makes the case for the importance of song for working-class women: “I want to suggest that women’s blues provides a cultural space for community-building among working-class black women, and that it was a space in which the coercions of bourgeois notions of sexual purity and “true womanhood” were absent” (Davis, 1998, p. 44). Traditional singing is deeply embedded in the community and “at times, provide[s] an alternative form of discourse…a framework for discussing and dealing with the tensions and dilemmas of everyday existence” (Ó Laoire, 2005, p. xii). The songs have a power because the singing is part of the community. Davis states that “The blues in performance creates space for spontaneous audience response in a manner that is similar to religious testifying” (Davis, 1998, p. 55). While the Irish song tradition is perceived as being a solo endeavour any witnessing of a traditional singing session especially in a small community or house will attest to the ongoing conversation between the singer and their community, indeed many such groupings join in the chorus or last line of the song. “Words of support knife between the stanzas. Voices join at the ends of the lines, and the song is followed by applause and a flurry of compliments. ‘Good man Flanagan’. ‘That’s the man can sing’” (Glassie, 1982, p. 81). It is interesting

102 to note that both authors, Davis and Ní Shíocháin, trace the line of female defiance historically and trace these attributes through the singing of songs. A long line of female defiance that has yet to be broken. It is also important to remember that in Ireland many traditional singers, including myself view the traditional songs as belonging to everyone. Frank Harte constantly emphasised this point. Davis notes that “blues songs were never considered the personal property of their composers or the performers. They were the collective property of the black community, disseminated, like folktales, in accordance with the community’s oral tradition. A blues sung by one person and heard, remembered, revised, and resung by another belonged as much to the second performer as to the first” (Davis, 1998, p. 136). This mirrors Lord’s thinking. Davis goes on to define further: “This socializing character of the blues rendered conscious the shared nature of emotional experience as well as the collective character of the blues form itself”. And moving on to qualify the female dimension states “‘Last minute Blues’ presents an individual female experience of pain within a relationship and transforms it into a collective naming of the social quality of black women’s domestic experiences” (Davis, 1998, p. 136). As mentioned earlier when I went to concerts to witness and listen to various female singers I was learning even then, even though it didn’t feel like it. Indeed, I was engaged in experiential research that I could later utilize to formulate my own way of singing, speaking out and being an activist. “It is important, I think, to understand women’s blues as a working-class form that anticipates the politicalization of the “personal” through the dynamic of “consciousness-raising,” a phenomenon associated with the women’s movement of the last three decades” (Davis, 1998, p. 42). In many ways my experiential research has deepened my understanding of class issues. Through listening to songs and reading about the lives of others I broadened the context of my understanding. Listening to the blues I began to form ideas about the lives of black people in America. Likewise, many of our own traditional and folk songs are full of stories around the hardship of poverty and emigration and these songs brought the realities and extreme deprivation of poverty home to me in not just a statistical way but also importantly in an emotional, caring and compassionate manner. The songs can be much deeper than our politics or histories.

103 Is singing enough? The evolution of FairPlé Auto-ethnography sometimes can bring up unexpected issues. Upon reflection through my research I began to articulate feelings which helped me to reassess my experience as a performer and reframe my own work environment. The cultural environment in Ireland, the stories of the repeal the 8th campaign and the #MeToo movement in America had a profound effect on my own thinking. Somewhere along this juncture of research, activism and performance I felt I needed to do more than singing to promote social change for women. Similarly, to my conversations on colonialism and poverty in the previous chapter I utilised the songs to express what I felt about the social activism. (See Appendix for Facebook post on immigration in the U.S.) Then reversing the process this activism fed into my song-writing, as evidenced by the song “Who is Going to Build Your Wall? Not Me!”. What was notable about my speaking out about the sexism found in Irish and traditional folk music was the extraordinary response to it. So many women and men came up to me after I spoke out at a concert in Dublin asking for change. The singer Síle Denvir, explained how important it was for her as a woman to be sitting in the audience and to see a line-up of all men except myself and how she felt vindicated and really admired my courage in asking for change (Denvir, 2018). The FairPlé campaign grew out of this protest. It grew out of what I said not what I sang and I learned an invaluable life and artistic lesson from this. I used this information to explore new areas within my artistic practice. The campaign received much praise and support for speaking up for women and so many women and men commended the campaign I was taken aback. It really was a whirlwind. For a history of some of the events that the campaign organised please see the Appendix for a speech I gave at the Rising Tides Festival on the 8th of Sept. 2018; for a brief overview visit our webpage and social media sites for a more in-depth coverage of what we have achieved49. The great gift of this campaign was that so many women felt their stories or voices were being aired and acknowledged. Of course there was some resistance as well. “What is this thing – a nation – that is so powerful it can make songs, attract sacrifice and is so exclusive it drives into hiding the complex and sceptical ideas which

49 www.fairple.com, https://www.facebook.com/FairPleMusic/, https://twitter.com/FairPle

104 would serve it best?” (Boland, 1996, p. 69). The gift of expressing the hurt that women have endured deserves some mention and consideration. Davis speaks to this in her writing: It names domestic violence in the collective context of blues performance and therefore defines it as a problem worthy of public discourse. Hearing the song, women who were victims of such abuse consequently could perceive it as a shared and thus social condition (Davis, 1998, p. 28).

The conversations from the activism urged me to be reflective on my repertoire including the past and present feminist traditional songs. The issue of sexual harassment became a theme in my 2nd PhD performance. During the FairPlé campaign people started emailing in with stories that changed the focus from a discussion on gender balance and quotas50 to sexual assault. This would merit a PhD in its own right and I want to keep the trajectory of the thesis on my performance but the results of this research did have a powerful effect on me and were channelled into my performances. (See appendix) Echoing Bartleet’s brilliant auto-ethnographic account of her life as a conductor she reminds us that role modelling is crucial to making life decisions and many women have to overcome what we learn as girls and what society demands of us in order to dream a new life for ourselves often against tremendous odds. Since childhood I had seen conductors as school teachers who frightened the hell out of their students by making them perform solos in front of the whole school band. Of course they were nice, fun-loving men when they were cooking hamburgers at school functions, but when they stepped up to the podium they could strike the fear of god in their wide-eyed students…It is no wonder the thought of becoming a conductor had never ever crossed my mind (Bartleet, 2009, p. 714).

It would be impossible for this campaigning to not have an effect on my musical life or indeed upon the trajectory of the research and indeed upon my second performance called I Walked into My Head. On a practical level within my working and campaigning life I have undertaken and given talks on FairPlé at various festivals, for example, Masters of Tradition and the Cork Folk Festival. As a result of the work with FairPlé I am also working with a higher proportion of female instrumentalists in my

50 For more information on gender quotas look at http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/4891/Why_quotas_work_for_gender_eq uality.html

105 band. Whilst I have always worked with women I am now actively mindful of working with women in the music industry, even in the areas within the music industry which do not have a historical presence of women, for example using women for sound production and photography. I also started being more confident in my approach to my own song-writing and have started to source songs written by women such as Eliza Gilkyson, Patti Griffin and Janis Ian as evidenced on my new album Hieroglyphs that Tell the Tale (Casey, 2018). The gift though of FairPlé for me has been the airing of women’s stories and grievances and for the hurt to be given a political channel and a voice. It differed from my activism against poverty and colonialism, as I was one of the national directors of the FairPlé movement. The research also permitted me to process much of the critical thinking of Davis and Ní Shíocháin. Once I had embodied these notions they really poured into the second PhD performance called I Walked into My Head.

Second PhD performance - I Walked into My Head I Walked into My Head is the title of my second performance for the arts practice PhD. It is a 50-minute piece consisting of a series of poems and songs that are intertwined and set to music. I composed it mostly on piano with the string arrangements and percussive elements performed through Midi in ProTools. As the program note states:

I Walked into My Head is a work-in-progress written, composed and performed by Karan Casey. In this adventurous genre defying piece: song, song-poems, sound design, piano music and feminist politics are set against the backdrop of a new Ireland which is relearning how to love its womenfolk. It demonstrates Casey’s brave spirit constantly challenging herself artistically to find answers to broader societal questions by utilizing the play-sphere of the machinations of her mind.

Place and people In reviewing how the performance came about and the practicalities around it I want to explore more now how my experiential research helped me to write and perform this piece. All of the strands of my creative practice merged during this performance. I decided to present the piece in the University of Limerick in Theatre 1.

106 That way I could avail of the venue, the sound and lighting crew, the support of the Academy to advertise the performance and indeed the beautiful Steinway grand piano. It was an entirely different set of circumstances to the first performance. I also chose to perform the piece on my own. This was initially for financial reasons but as the development of the piece progressed it became clear that this had freed me up artistically.

Contextual framework My development of this piece started in 2011. My continual return to this piece proved to me that I had a very deep-seated desire to see it through, for it to be realised. I wrote over 50 poems and stories and whittled them down to ten. Many of these words, couplets or ideas are later worked up into songs. This particular project relies on the premise that I walk into my head and move through the different rooms or stanzas within my mind. Before this PhD I had not been introduced to the notion that songs and music live within the whole body, I had them firmly placed in the machinations of my head. So it has been a great delight to discover and appreciate that songs live within my whole being, I do breathe after all into every living cell to give them the life force and meaning that they require to be performed. In examining my auto-ethnographic journal I note what I wrote about the process of creating I Walked into My Head. It is a statement of intent:

This being the last elective during the second year of this arts practice PhD, I decided to really stretch myself. Being a professional singer for nearly twenty-five years most of my practice to date has been the collection, composition, recording and performance of song, but I have also been writing for years as well, short stories and poems. And I have long wanted an opportunity to perform these pieces and for them to see the light of day. I had figured out at this point that these pieces were different, no matter how hard I have tried over the years they could not be hammered into the ‘normal shape’ of a song and yet they weren’t quite short stories either. I feel they are spoken pieces that need to be performed on a stage by myself. Herein lies the first issue with this performance, I am not an actor and I don’t want to be one either and I find it really difficult to remember these words without the lovely balm of the melody holding me up for support. So I decided I needed help to structure the

107 pieces more and I thought someone with theatrical knowledge would improve my situation somewhat (Casey, 2018).

Research and the creative process The most interesting line to me from this statement above is “no matter how hard I have tried over the years they could not be hammered into the ‘normal shape’ of a song and yet they weren’t quite short stories either”. In many ways this is the crux of my thesis, I live and perform in so many ways and find creativity through so many channels that I often find myself in between worlds, being a folk and a traditional singer, being a mother and a touring musician, being a song-writer and a composer of pieces on the piano, writing poems and short stories, being a social activist and a performer. I had reams of material and I was finding it difficult to reduce the quantity of material and also to remember all the words. I returned to Lord as discussed in chapter 2 and his ideas around the recreation and re-composition of stories from formulaic building blocks. I began to incorporate some of this thinking while practising the pieces and used this methodology for my performances. I found this aspect of the research very useful. I don’t have to reproduce exactly what I have written, I can recreate and recompose on the spot and tell the same story, after all I wrote it and nobody knows yet what it is supposed to sound like, including myself. This is contrary to my singing of traditional and folk songs and performance even of my own songs as I am a bit of a perfectionist and always want to have the words ‘right’. One of the premises of Ní Shíocháin’s book Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Song (2018), is that oral song poets do compose during the actual performance of the songs, we demonstrate the “…re-creative impulse of orality and performance...” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018, p. 41). I decided to investigate this further. It puts me in mind of my father who at all of our many parties at home was able to go around the room and on the spot make up a few lines of poetry or a couplet about each person. We all loved the thrill of it, if not being slightly alarmed at what he was going to say. This is a living example of the song poet in action. “For it is in the very moment of performance itself that the song itself is realised” (Ní Shíocháin, 2018). I Walked into My Head consists of four songs, two self-composed and two traditional and a medley of five traditional songs (I sang one or two verses of each) (See Song Appendix). While singing these songs I accompanied myself on the piano except

108 for the medley where I was accompanied by the sound design played by Niall Vallely at the sound desk. We had both composed this sound design prior to the concert and Niall floated the sounds in during the live performance. The rest of the performance contained song-poems, pieces that I recited in a more recitative form where sometimes I played the piano (see “I Walked into My Head” 06:27-12:24). For other song-poems I moved around the stage and the sound design again became a feature of these elements of the work. I attached a microphone onto my clothes to permit me to walk around the stage. This movement was new to me as was the recitation of the song-poems but I drew heavily from my previous performative wisdom and bodily stored knowledges to enable me to overcome any challenges or perceived obstacles. Sandra Joyce, my supervisor also persuaded me to have a panel discussion after the performance. I was initially resistant to this idea as I thought that the performance was enough for one day, but this panel discussion which Sandra kindly facilitated was deeply instructive about the piece and I gained much valuable insight into the performance.

Panel discussion The panel discussion was exceptionally illuminating and a privilege for me to hear what others thought about the performance. Mirroring the questionnaire in chapter 3 the panel discussion was a second triangulation of my perceptions. Using interviews, feedback interviews, observation at rehearsals or performances, and participant observation, ethnographers can get a sense of the different musical forms that are experienced by people taking part in these social worlds (Berger, 2008, p. 71).

It was interesting how even though we didn’t set any questions for the panel discussion, many of the comments mirrored the previous questionnaire. The style or type of song was discussed, the manner in which I approached the different types of songs, my own songs and the traditional material was mentioned and the connection with the audience. What changed the conversation was a discussion on the different style of performance and this was noted and the invocation and honouring of the female lineage, particularly my mother and my daughters, was remarked upon. In terms of empowerment and the political content an audience member remarked that “It was like a protest or a question from the start” (Panel, 2019). Many different subjects emerged, for instance the type of performance itself, how different it was to my ‘normal’ show and how my song-poems and arrangements of the material were “jarring” at times or

109 “interruptive”. I found this particularly unusual and reflected on whether I had approached the piece with these intentions. I definitely did set out to do something different and to say my piece in a different manner. I was constructing a new performance style this time round in order perhaps to catch people’s ear in a more provocative manner. I have used the words and ideas presented in the panel discussion, again utilising an arts practice methodological approach, to better understand my performance. The ideas are peppered down through the discussion on the piece. Many of the people at the discussion were deeply cognisant of my previous work and some of the people present had never heard of me.

Areas of challenge for a performance While I performed this piece on my own I did receive much support in the production of it. The three people who I am deeply indebted to for help with this work are Niall Vallely, Olwen Fouéré and Mel Mercier. They each in their own inimitable fashion really supported me throughout the process. Niall Vallely was involved in the performance of the sound design before the performance and on the night. Niall wasn’t physically on the stage which is highly unusual for us both as he performed the sound design live. In struggling to find answers to some of the challenges presented by this piece I opted to work with Mel Mercier51 for an elective in UL in the spring term of 2018 and in working with Mel I began to approach things differently or certainly to listen to the art differently.

Themes The different themes that emerged during the writing of I Walked into My Head as previously mentioned briefly were evoking the female lineage, particularly speaking to my mother in the grave and my daughters in the cradle. (See “Daughter Dear” 37:27 and the song Appendix). Often it was unclear who was speaking to whom. This is a device often used in traditional song, for example in the song “Lord Gregory” the different people speak in the first person in different verses, and somehow we

51 Mel Mercier: “Professor and Chair of Performing Arts at the [U.L]’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance… bones player and percussionist (he’s the founder of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra)… he had written for nine Irish and international theatre productions, ranging from Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary…to Wayne Jordan’s production of The Shadow Of A Gunman for the Abbey Theatre” (Long, 2019).

110 manage to fill in the gaps and know who is speaking. The other theme that I approached in the piece was about travel, leaving my children behind while on tour. Travel was used as another liminal and temporal space for creating. Many of the traditional songs in the piece spoke to women trying to find a better place in the world for themselves. In the song medley I sang “Vanished Like the Snow” which asks why we write women out of history repeatedly. I sang “Eppie Morrie” which is a description of Eppie’s attempts to flee a gang of men who abduct her and try to rape her. The same theme can be found in the lyrics of “Maid on the Shore”. I revisited these songs with a renewed energy and a stronger clearer feminist political outlook, having been particularly informed by the robust research on feminist issues as evidenced above in the section on FairPlé. I discuss these issues further below. Before I do that I want to look at the importance of listening and listening with other creative people in order to advance any musical piece. And I want to discuss the challenges posed in writing this piece and in devising a structure for the actual performance, for finding a solution to these challenges.

Listening I was acutely aware when I played some of the pieces for Mel that he would be one of the first to listen to this project outside of myself, Niall and Bill Whelan52. While listening with Mel to the recordings I found myself listening differently. The importance of listening cannot be stressed enough. I think it is often taken for granted by musicians and artists as to how much we listen. Mel asked to listen to what I had and so we sat and listened. Having someone outside of my own head listening helped me to define greatly what was working and what wasn’t. We decided at this point to organise some more sessions and to keep listening to everything I had composed. There was an enormous amount of material. I had written and then chosen some 25 poems and around ten short stories that I felt comfortable reading and showing to Mel. I had recorded my recitation of these poems already and I had set four or five of them to music with Niall, again after much listening and re-listening. Mel really liked the pieces and of course the object of this is not to please Mel but to move the work along, but I think in working closely with someone on an artistic level it is easier and better if both people enjoy the work. As mentioned earlier I was deeply concerned with remembering all of these words without a melody. While I have

52 Bill Whelan: Composer and musician, composed music for Riverdance.

111 hundreds of songs in me already, they reside there happily in my body but they do so in conjunction with a melody. They are deeply entwined. But while I had worked on a solution to retain the words, anxiety had started to permeate my thoughts on the performance mostly due to the content of some of the more political and personal pieces. In setting out to perform an entirely new type of piece, I was now anxious about my piano playing, movement on stage and speaking or reciting as opposed to singing.

Experiential research My own experiential research into overcoming anxiety was drawn upon to try to resolve these different issues. In breaking the pieces down into verses this seemed to relieve my anxiety about the performance. I was reminded of when I first began learning traditional songs and how long that took, particularly in the beginning. I would spend up to ten or twelve hours a day listening, transcribing and hearing and rehearing and then embodying the whole experience and digesting, distilling and finally coming up with something I liked at the time. I went off and broke down the pieces in “I Walked into My Head” into smaller sections, verses or stanzas might be a better term, and I worked on each part. I also worked on the piano and speaking separately and I will discuss those aspects later. An reacaire In the second chapter I examined the early history of Irish song and poetry and their connections. The notion that the poet or “an reacaire” or the singer brings a life force and energy to the songs and provides meaning through performativity has been recognised for a long time. “Poems composed...were not intended merely for silent reading but also ‘to be agreeable and pleasing to the ear’ and the full savour of their intricate sound patterns was brought out by the reacaire...” (Breathnach, 1971, p. 20). I found this theme running through Glassie, Lord and Ní Shíocháin’s writing irresistible. This helped me to navigate some of the challenges with I Walked into My Head. I decided to rely on the footfall of the metre within the poetry to act as scaffolding much like the music in the songs. I clung to this metre for dear life. It hadn’t struck me that this was a feature of my writing but I think this emphasises how much Irish poetry and writing I have absorbed already and how this was bound to have an impact upon the performance. This would confirm Lord’s and Ní Shíocháin’s thinking on the use of formula and how these patterns are repeated and re-created or reworked.

112 An example of such writing, noting the rhythm and rhyming scheme came to the fore in the song-poem called “Dublin Airport Carpark”:

Her two paws praying Holding, hawking green. Her two tall tawny ears Searching for the ancient sounds Her grandmother's stolen grounds Her ancient ancestral home Her leveret's lean-to levelled Her green grass torn up Replaced with scratchy stones and Metallic beasts in lines of colour Progress?

Moving the project along Niall Vallely has always been crucially very supportive of my mad notions. He encouraged me to practice and to take all the time I needed to get it right. I am often impatient. But art doesn’t work that way. Art takes a lot of work. It takes years to create even the smallest song or poem and I have been probably gearing myself up to this for years. And again in rereading my journal I note:

Niall mentioned that he has a lot of stuff on file from a film project he worked on. My ears are out on stalks, really? I try to remain calm. Yes, he says he has some E-bow sounds on the strings of the piano and some melodic and percussive sounds processed through reverbs, him playing the piano also recorded and worked up through different reverb sounds. I know he has many of these sounds from his concertina also recorded as I heard him one day out in the studio playing around with them. He kindly says that maybe we could have a listen to them and see if I like any of them and if they might work underneath the poems? He also suggests that I could use the backing tracks from my own work on a previous album. I am so thrilled and wait. For once I wait. Eventually the wait is worth it and we get nearly two days listening to music and sounds that Niall has created. I love them, they are perfect. I am dancing around the studio at this point in time. We trawl through them and listen and try out different ideas. We decide that some of them will work and some of them won’t but that we can record other ideas, after his PhD is handed in, when we have

113 more time. I also have a listen back to the music of some of my own pieces and start pondering what I could take out rather than what I could put in. It starts to come together and it has to be said that I now love Skywoman. The music and sounds that we picked and put behind it works much better; the piece starts to come to life. We disagree on some ideas but when it is good and fits both myself and Niall agree. I think this often happens when creating something. When it is good or there is a good idea hanging there in the air everyone knows it (Casey, 2018).

Other challenges I was also having difficulty with the speaking parts in terms of inflection and tone and Mel suggested that I contact Olwen Fouéré. I knew Olwen through much of her work in theatre and in particular her work with Marina Carr as stated in chapter one. The problems of course as I perceived them were all in my head as noted in my journal:

My voice was still dropping in pitch and I speak too fast and now as I try out different inflections when I am reciting the song-poems, I find that there is less urgency in the voice or at times it sounds a little contrived. I wonder if this is all in my head or if this is the way it sounds to other people…I explained to Olwen that I needed some instruction on vocal production and movement and general direction. The moment Olwen was on board I knew everything would work out alright. When she entered the room I was very nervous but after her listening and giving me a hearing I felt tremendously relieved that she liked it. Again I listened differently in her presence. I also knew that she wouldn’t butter me up or lie about things and I think I was also really chuffed to be working with such an experienced incredible woman (Casey, 2018).

Methodological Approaches In this process of listening to the pieces and figuring out how to proceed we were creating along the way. A continual flow of conversation between myself and Olwen at the rehearsals goes back and forth urging the piece on. I also took a lot of time considering what was working or not. Much of my thinking for this piece centres around not breaking the spell between the world of the talking and the world of the

114 singing. I discuss at length with Olwen if in the middle of the “Dublin Airport Carpark” piece I could sing these words: The Devil is in her dance Hey look at her in those red pants The Devil is in her dance Hey look at her in those red pants

Asking whether my singing would interrupt the atmosphere created by the speaking voice, I also ponder how to weave the music in and out of the poems and how the flow will be between the poems and the songs. Olwen had repeatedly encouraged me during the rehearsals to slow down and savour the words. Perhaps I was somewhat frightened by my own words and how personal they were and how I couldn’t hide as much as in my ‘normal’ performance. There I was after all exposed and alone on the stage. Olwen was incredibly intuitive around this vulnerable area and slowly managed to persuade me to step forward. After many of the rehearsals with Olwen I left feeling encouraged to try out different voices and I did some listening to help this process.

Listening and research I listened to Roaratorio by John Cage (Cage, 1979) and Laurie Anderson’s Landfall recording with the Kronos Quartet (Anderson, 2018). It was a very useful comparison, the Cage performance being more about the sound of the words I felt than the meaning. And Anderson’s vocal work in this case being very minimal within the overall context of the music. I listened differently now to how the words were actually performed. In October of 2018 I had travelled up to Dublin to see Karine Polwart perform her Wind Resistance (Polwart, 2017) which is a mixture of songs and narrative, telling the story of her local bogland and the local environmental plight of the bog along with the midwifery hospital that was on the grounds of the bog. It was fascinating to watch and listen to. What resonated the most with me was her bravery, her courage during the performance to put herself so far out of her comfort zone and for it to work. I had spoken to her about my own project a few years earlier when I started work on I Walked into My Head. I was very enthused by Karine’s performance and decided to keep going with my own piece. I also redid the vocals and slowed them all down in an effort to really annunciate the words and create some space between the lyrics so as the pieces could breathe a little more.

115

Movement Myself and Olwen discussed at length whether I should stay at the piano or move around the stage, initially I was very frightened by movement but gradually during the rehearsals I began to move with some ease. Olwen felt that my being at the piano was “very strong” and her initial gut reaction to this gave me the strength to stay at the piano and in essence as Niamh Dunne mentioned “The piano became like an anchor” (Dunne, 2019). It rooted the stage setting as well as the music. Another audience member reconfirmed this during the panel discussion mentioning how the piano metaphorically acted as a grave, a coffin and a cradle. I found great solace in being at the piano and great pride that I had managed to overcome my fear of not being good enough at the piano playing and to pointedly stay there and work things out. I also moved around the stage whereas in my ‘normal’ gig I stay rooted at the microphone.

Travel and choice Much of the work is about travel. I do travel a lot and I take it for granted as part of my job but I also find it to be one of the few times when I am truly on my own and when I can carve out a bit of time to create. It’s not surprising that the pieces would have elements of temporal and spatial appreciation. I wondered about the value of again breaking up the different sections and creating even more space between each of them. I try to extend the transitional times, the headspace times, the away and the return, with a constant theme being the rain which always goes away and returns. As Mel suggests “Invoking the journey in the rain” (Mercier, 2018). An audience member asked

…at the moment now watching you come out with the suitcase and walk around and a sense that you've committed to something and that is a different kind of engagement of different kind of a performance for you than what maybe we're used to the things that you've done thousands of times (Panel, 2019).

One friend after the gig thought that my coming out on the stage with the suitcase was a conversation about the abortion referendum and that I was invoking the thousands of Irish women who were forced to travel for abortion services in England, Europe and America. Many people took different elements from the performance and shaped them to their own conviction and experiences. The audience has an experience

116 as well that can be entirely different to my or any artist’s agenda. As confirmed by Sean Óg Graham:

…well you talking about your experiences and that all coming out in the performance, but the audience are also there to experience…So they're also taking it in themselves (Graham, 2019).

A piece in the performance that really speaks to travel is “Heathrow Again” (See Appendix). Something I rarely speak about in my performances or interviews is my anxiety in leaving my children. I found this exceptionally difficult during my career as a singer but I never spoke about it as I was perhaps under pressure to feel grateful for my career opportunities and so I didn’t want to be seen as a woman who whinges. There is also a lot of commercial pressure on women from the music industry and society not to complain, to accept and work with what we have got. This was one of the first times that artistically I stepped forward to try and describe this emotional dilemma that besets many touring mothers. I appreciate that many fathers can feel lonely also but in my experience they aren’t asked about this in interviews and certainly not to the same extent as women. Also in the moment of this creative writing I felt released from the weight of these emotions. This mirrors Perry’s thinking when she states “Standing on my own two feet celebrating imagination and its power to effect change in a person and that person’s life” (Perry, 2010, p. 38).

Methodological approaches to writing “Heathrow, again” Another of the issues that I am teasing out was the fact that sometimes the musical piece I wrote to accompany the words is too dense. It overpowers the words and is fighting with the text in a sense. I attempt to write less music and to let the words come to the fore. I tried for a different approach altogether and Niall downloaded some of the BBC sound effects library which had just been made available online (BBC, 2018). We explored different sound effects along with the words eventually deciding on Heathrow airport background noise with constant announcement and the sound of children in a playground. Niall also took to recording our eternal Irish rain with him trudging about in it, which we decided against using. I again slowed everything down and spoke with a little less drama this time round hoping for the lyrics to sing for themselves.

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“Skywoman” or “Dublin Airport Carpark” I ask out loud if the poem needs to be named at the start of each piece or is it better for the listener to imagine for themselves what these words conjure up? Rather than my explaining with a title at the beginning that this poem is about a hare I met in Dublin airport carpark I decide to opt for the more abstract title of “Skywoman nó an Spéirbhean”, and the only hint of her being a hare comes towards the end of the poem where her leveret is mentioned. I love this aspect of the way the work is turning and prefer that there is some magic invested. Mel felt that this piece could really benefit from a little accompaniment musically or sonically as he calls it. A contributor to the panel discussion framed the whole piece in very different terms and spoke to the liminality and magic he found in the piece:

You were inviting comments about audience reaction and I just thought the sequence about the Spéirbhean as really breath-taking. And there is a kind of beauty that is kind of handed out in strangeness and there were a couple of moments like that where it just seems to create its own territory that wasn't light or dark. It was like a kind of fairyland. Like you’re trying to start the car one morning and the spéirbhean looks in the window there's a wonderful notion that the other world is still there, is still all around us so I thought that was very powerful…just by the way these moments of strangeness where the audience get the rug pulled from under them I thought it was really clever at times. Very breathtakingly strange and beautiful (Panel, 2019).

In essence I am speaking to the countless women who have been victimised and silenced. The hare is still defiant and she is struggling to stand her ground in the airport. The hare is also an environmentalist. It is interesting that the hare is mostly silent until the end, she doesn’t say anything but expresses herself in her dance. This in- between world was illuminated by this audience member.

Song section It is interesting to note that much of the creative and compositional pre- rehearsal time was engaged in writing and learning the words of both the songs and the song-poems, reciting the words, piano playing and the composition of sound design. Once I started actual rehearsals in a room with Olwen I worked on how all of this was

118 woven into one piece and how movement was addressed on stage. The songs that I sang in the midsection were familiar to me. I felt as if I had the singing under my belt. But I did muse on what songs I would sing and really they flowed. I sang many songs that were from my older repertoire and which after the FairPlé campaign and the PhD research I had now reframed as feminist material and approached with a renewed vigour and intent. I sang as evidenced in the audio-visual “Vanished like the Snow”, “She is like the Swallow”, “Eppie Morrie”, “The Maid on the Shore”, and “The Snows They Melt the Soonest” (see appendix 2). An audience member was keen to point out during the panel discussion how this section connected with her:

…And when you do that sort of mix of “She's like the Swallow” and all those songs it’s just highlighting all the sexism and all that completely unacceptable stuff that's out there for right now. I just felt you were tying up all elements of society, that you were triumphant at the end and speaking to your daughter and finally recognizing for you you've done the journey (Panel, 2019).

This piece was one place where I felt I could relax and enjoy myself. It was interesting to reflect that these songs had held important meaning for me during my entire performing life. I could lean into my experiential wisdom in performing. Sometimes I had felt too afraid to speak up around the issue of sexism and had held back during my ‘normal’ performance. Mick McAuley,53 someone who I had worked with extensively, asked if perhaps I had felt the need in the past to “dumb down” the introductions. This was illuminating to me and yes I agreed I most likely did, as it’s difficult to have a conversation from the stage with the audience and also difficult to bring up thorny issues.

“Voices” (See Appendix for words) “Voices” has become the cornerstone of this piece. The question is when can a woman speak up? In singing out our woes we use the songs as a space where we can cultivate and tell our story; where we can create a time out of the ordinary where we are honoured and loved; where we can use the balm of the melody to

53 Mick McAuley: Accordion player, singer and song-writer and member of the band Solas.

119 protect ourselves; where we can nurture the audience and community into growing with us and hearing our narrative; where the collective listening promotes a community of respect and togetherness; where society evolves even for a millisecond, the wind chimes differently, the chords resonate strongly, the song becomes a different song and challenges the songs of the ages. Much like the four birds who surrounded Aengus the God of love and flew alongside him, the songs fly with us and keep us safe. When we can sing our troubles and emotionally connect with people we invite the audience and community into our heads so as they can understand how our lives really are. Before this research and the FairPlé campaign I lived in my head. I persuaded myself that I could survive the slights, the innuendo, the jibes, the jokes, the constant and persistent comments about my looks, the groping and verbal harassment. I could cope. Or should cope. The gift of this time has been for the feelings and actions that I suppressed, to have been confirmed and for my own story to have seen some light of day. “Voices” became the centrepiece of I Walked into My Head. It took all of my strength as a performer to perform it. I engaged all the strands of my collective and experiential knowledge and forged it together to write it and to have the courage to say it. It took a lot out of me (Casey, 2019).

I do not believe that I would have had the emotional and robust psychological strength to perform this piece without my activism and knowledge gained during the FairPlé campaign as crucially I now felt supported by many women and men within the traditional folk community to be able to voice these concerns and joys. Also I feel that the wider society is now perhaps more open to a discussion on feminism. I brought my new experiences from the movement into my song writing and crucially I brought these ideas into my talking. This blending of the narrative really came to the fore in I Walked into My Head. I decided to try saying what I felt and this evolved into song-poems. One of the key insights from this thesis is that it is often only when I speak up or explain my political intent that the meaning becomes apparent. This different creative approach in the song-poems released me from some of the old patterns of performing. Because I am a traditional singer who has devoted my life to singing about people’s woes, even if I identify with some of them, I find it difficult to talk about my

120 own. I was tremendously supported on the night of my PhD 2nd performance. I felt incredibly relieved after it was over. Of course I worried about the usual areas, had I done a good enough job in the recitative and particularly in the politically charged areas? So in essence many of the same issues with my ‘normal’ gig still prevailed. An audience member during the panel discussion asked about the ‘direct address’ as he called it:

Which I think invariably includes direct address to your audience…Which I imagine is terribly important for you in the context of you know of concertizing and all the things that those spaces in between songs allow you to do in terms of connecting, in terms of saying things, in terms of humour and all of that stuff that you've built up really well over the years of pulling your audience in, connecting with them checking in whether they whether they're being with you all that dynamic. You've done this and you probably always knew you were going to do this without having that. How did that feel? (Panel, 2019).

Karan: It felt liberating…Because you see a lot of the time, as Niall will tell you, I absolutely agonise about what I'm going to say not about what I'm going to sing because I sort of have it practiced. And I also find that sometimes I unsettle people by talking, I could sing about colonialism, or worker’s rights or whatever till the cows come home and people will say oh, that's lovely, good girl (Panel, 2019).

It is illuminating that in response to the issue of replacing my talking or direct address with the song-poems and that I answered “I felt liberated”. I think it is possible to feel anxiety over aspects of performance but then the performances allow me the space to overcome these problems or at least to view them from a different perspective, to dream in a different way, to imagine a better world. Perhaps this is the one way for the world to evolve, to walk into our heads and realise a new version of ourselves. Essentially, Moloney, Ní Shíocháin, Csikszentmihalyi, Lord, and Davis have all suggested this scenario. And singing is one of the ancient arenas for such change.

The words jarring and interruptive came up quite a bit during the panel discussion with one audience member saying “So thank you I mean that was great, it

121 was interesting, it was powerful, it was jarring at times” (Panel, 2019). This was echoed by another contributor:

… and then as someone was saying earlier your arrangement of “Siúil a Rúin” it's so wonderfully disruptive and when you start doing the left hand there with the chords that are different and just for a split second I thought had you made a mistake. Then I thought oh it's, it’s actually disrupting the piece. There is the kind of sadness in some Irish traditional songs it’s actually very sweet. We actually love it we want it to continue but I thought it was just so clever the way you used the arrangement to disrupt that kind of sadness, this isn't the kind of sadness that should become addictive that there's a darker, more discordant note so there's a way of commenting on the tradition (Panel, 2019).

Again this was mirrored by a different person attending:

It was like a protest or a question from the start. I got that straight away when you were playing “Siúil a Rúin” and when you re-harmonize it, it felt for me like all the questions and vulnerabilities that you might have gone through in your earlier life that you were sort of coming out the other side and doing everything your way (Panel, 2019).

All of these words, “protest, question, jarring and disruptive” are very revealing and I hadn’t seen, heard, felt or intended this in the rehearsals but in many ways these words do suggest and bring to mind the way sexism pervades the community that we work in.

Conclusion To conclude, this chapter has been an examination into the critical writings mainly of Davis, Ni Shíocháin and my own experience of song. Advocating the arts practice methodological approach, I formalised this critique through the prism of my own work. The emergence of FairPlé was briefly explored and I do feel that more time for this research is needed. But as life intervenes and interjects itself into my music I felt it was necessary to explain how the FairPlé movement and thinking bled into my second performance called I Walked into My Head.

122 The chapter also dealt with the process of writing, creating and performing I Walked into My Head. I witnessed through the arts practice lens how I mediated between the song making, poetry writing, piano playing and movement on stage. During this auto-ethnographic journaling I have reflected upon the experience of composing and detailed how the creative works emerge. While this is a work in progress, I feel I have honed the writing of the pieces, I have worked on the performance in terms of the delivery of the words and music and I have made progress on the writing of the music and the sound design or the musical setting. In reflecting on this I note how the creative process outlined above is a vital and integral element of my practice. I would like to thank Mel Mercier, Niall Vallely and Olwen Fouéré for all their time and consideration during this creative process. In this exploration I also framed my past performances and singing of feminist song in a new and clear feminist voice. I utilised data from the interviews and from the post-performance panel discussion.

123 Chapter 5: Conclusion

“And so to conclude and to finish my rhyme I hope you’ll excuse me for wasting your time” Roger the Miller

In investigating my performance of song I have gained some insights that have greatly challenged my practice. I am profoundly thankful for the opportunity to have engaged with my practice as a researcher. The distance away from my working life has given me a new perspective, indeed my singing life now is measured with a renewed vigour and sentiment of gratitude and joy as I feel that, Yes I can do this! I know how to do this, in fact everything about my body is cherishing this moment in time to sing. The beauty to be found in a good song is endless, it goes on like the river of the ages and is life affirming at all times. I am hopeful these insights will contribute to the body of artistic and academic knowledge and will be of use to future singers, artists, musicians and indeed any person who takes the time to read it. I also chose to write the PhD in accessible language and I tried to be clear at all times. I want to stress that my performances are the central inherent intellectual contribution to any canon of thought or philosophical considerations that this thesis builds. I sought through an investigation of my embodied knowledge, my performance, auto-ethnographic writing and experiential research a better understanding of my own creative process. I use my whole body as the central processing hub, seeking and questioning myself for intelligences. I am using the word intelligent in the broadest and deepest sense, to give a feeling for emotional courage, psychological robustness and insightful musical, cultural and political information for the future, for creating new ideas out of the old. Further questions that arose from this research could focus on mentoring performers in the field of activism to encourage societal change particularly looking at fairness in the workplace and eliminating sexism. Other possible lines of inquiry that I would relish the opportunity to do further work on would be in the area of gender and feminist thinking particularly through the prism of singing. In the first chapter I interrogated the key formative musical and social events and people in my life that have contributed to my performance of song, so far. I utilised the arts practice methodological approach of an auto-ethnographic journal to gain some insights but also crucially to spark off or initiate conceptual and philosophical ideas. I enjoyed this process immensely and often found myself in flow mode which I then tried

124 to frame into a more coherent structure using reflection, another key arts practice tactic to substantiate my theories. In chapter 1 I additionally outlined the methodological approaches that I would be utilising: ethnographic interviews, archival research, documentation of my performances in the form of a video recording, and I sketched early theories on my thoughts around experiential research paying particular attention to listening and to my long experience as a singer. I called this experiential research and I really want to give credence to this embodied knowledge because I have worked so hard to gain it. I am hopeful that other people will avail of this information. Utilizing texts from Chang, Freeman, Smith and Dean, and Bartleet among others I teased out the various strands within the arts practice canon of thought. I introduced the main philosophical texts of Ní Shíocháin and Davis and Csikszentmihalyi which form the bulk of the theoretical underpinning of my thesis. I loved these books. They sang themselves off the pages and I can’t wait to reread them. I would strongly encourage people to read them - they were life-changing in their insightful, reasoned wisdoms. Other sub themes that I alluded to during the thesis centred around somatics or ‘embodied knowledge’ referencing Lakoff and Johnson, Zahavi and Gallagher and I feel that this area would merit more work and research. I was really fascinated by these ideas and I would relish more time to develop other ideas around these complex analytical academic texts particularly in relation to my singing. This first chapter helped me to formulate my ideas and gave me a roadmap for the possibilities of the study. I also articulated for the first time in my life on paper what I was doing when performing. Prior to the PhD I had been blazing my way through life trying to make everything work. One key insight for myself at this juncture was to slow down, to think, to analyse and to recognise what I had actually achieved. Some relevant contextualisation for the background subjects of the Irish traditional and folk songs which focussed on writings from Ó Tuama and Kinsella, Lord, Moloney, Vallely, Shields and Ní Shíocháin were central to the second chapter. I framed much of my discussion of these subjects on the cultural and musical tendencies employed through my own singing, again authorising and accentuating a vital arts practice methodological approach - my practice is my research. I viewed these tendencies through my singing of “The Rocks of Bawn” and “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. I saw that my own singing while very informed by the tradition utilised many styles and techniques from different genres of singing and that I embodied much of this information by practicing and trying to formulate my own sound or voice. I looked at

125 the history of traditional song but soon discovered that this would be a thesis in itself. I traced the historic origins of political folk song. I became mesmerised during this research by notions around orality, performativity, the poetic voice or an reacaire and I started artistically to play these spheres out. Lord, Glassie, Ní Shíocháin and Ó Laoire entered the picture and I began to think maybe I could try something different. Chapter 3 went on to investigate my creative writing and song-writing process. I viewed my singing through the arts practice prism of researching your own work through auto-ethnographic writing and reflection. I mused on my song writing techniques and investigated more readings on creativity and phenomenology. I analysed my first performance in Dolan’s of Limerick and fielded a questionnaire collecting data from the audience, trying to find answers to theories I had formulated about my singing. Some were confirmed, some were challenged. It was good fodder for the head. I also transcribed interviews I had conducted with some of my musical peers and this shed new light on my concepts. This chapter migrated to a discussion on campaigning as it became apparent I needed to interrogate more why much of my song repertoire is chosen to promote social justice and fairness in the world. I substantiated my theory that poetry and the backstory are key cultural indicators for my performances and that this blending of the narratives is crucial to my own performances particularly when trying to have a conversation with the audience about political issues. I also started to question seriously what the difference was when I was singing social justice messages as opposed to talking about them. This conundrum led me to a more incisive and more profound investigation of the performance of social justice. This social activism or performance of social justice was finally interrogated again within the contextualisation of readings from Davis and Ní Shíocháin in the fourth chapter. I found at this stage in my life that the research was reaching not only into my performances but also into my activism. Giving a woman books and loads of ideas to play with is a dangerous thing! I decided to construct a different style of performance and I believe that the reflections from my research enabled me to do this. Being in a different environment and watching other colleagues in the university try challenging new performance styles also encouraged me. In many ways while I was deeply challenged I also could draw on my experiential research and knew subconsciously that I would be able to perform this, despite my protestations, much like Flow!

126 My final PhD performance was called I Walked into My Head and it is a serious piece that attempts to wrestle with some of society’s questions. Many of the conceptual ideas were reconfirmed while working with a feminist group I helped found called FairPlé. This movement gave me the strength to try out other conceptual ideas and to put a different slant on my performance. What emerged was I Walked into My Head. I am very proud of it and also extremely thankful to the university for giving me the opportunity to perform it. I am also proud of my piano playing. I am hoping to tour this piece and work more with this newly constructed style of performance. I am hopeful that it will be constructive for others who want to know about life on the road as a female. I am also hopeful that it will illuminate for people how I view the world through my singing, how my understanding of the world as a woman and as a feminist is expressed through this piece. Through the writing of this thesis I strengthened my understanding that I am a folk singer who is greatly informed by traditional Irish singing and entirely eclectic when I want to be. I borrow freely from other musics but reframe them in my own musical personality. The performance of social justice is crucial to my performance, illuminates how I feel about the world, connects with the audience, and this along with my activism has the inherent power to create a potent political experience and to enact social change. I also wish to encourage young people especially that life in the arts is a treat, an honour and really a worthy undertaking but it is difficult financially. I have found that it enhances my life immeasurably and hopefully enriches the lives of others. I did have to ask hard questions though about my life as a performer, questions about being on the road as a woman and as someone who believes that we can all evolve as humans this threw up difficult answers. The sexism that is evident was very difficult to discuss and dissect and I struggled with this aspect of the research. I found help in my community. I also learned that my writing was a way for me to tease issues out. I felt I needed to be more academic in my writing in an effort to try to fit into academia. Sometimes though this approach didn’t work and I felt that the auto-ethnographic methodological approach was more successful in delivering the meaning and in truth telling. While writing in the liminal space, the creative moment out of time, being ‘in the zone,’ I found myself in my favourite place, the in-between world where everything is possible. Essentially I had come full circle and through the writing back to the songs, I had found my way home. Home to the songs; songs hold up possibilities for humanity,

127 they scaffold our dreams, they allow us to be other people, to walk into other worlds and other people’s heads and understand more and imagine a better world, to love and to forgive. That’s what all the good songs are about, possibility. Everyone knows what song they want you to sing at their wedding or at their parent’s funeral and they remember what songs they were singing in the bathroom as a teenager. They are our deep cultural memes and have the ability to encourage connection and community- building and advocate for social justice. I witness this every time I sing and the audience chimes in for the chorus, some roaring at the top of their heads, some humming quietly, some swaying gently, some dancing around the back exit sign, some crying, some holding onto their knitting pattern and needles at the same time in order to bop in the chair or clutching their partners for the first time in a while and some folding their arms tightly and glaring. All communing with the ages. I would like to finish off by saying that all of my questioning came from much the same place that I sing. It is a small sacred place deep within me. It is sometimes vulnerable and afraid but mostly full of love and curiosity. It finds a way eventually to grow into itself and to survive. I did take a chance with this research, I did ask difficult questions, primarily about myself but also extending out to the community that I live in. I did this out of love and nothing else. I also want to encourage people to sing and hopefully this research will promote notions around singing enabling community- building and cheering on love. Much of my past performance of song has been the promotion or uplifting journey of enriching myself and others with the gift of song and singing, if that’s not too self-congratulatory. Tonight is the 3rd of Sept. 2019 and I am hoping to submit this in a week’s time. I can’t wait to have the cup of tea in hand and to sit in the kitchen and to sing softly.

128 Bibliography

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137 Discography

Altan, 1993, Island Angel [CD] . New Canaan, CT: Green Linnet. Anderson, L., 2018. Landfall [CD]. New York: Nonesuch Records. Behan, D., 1960. Seán South [Album]. London: Topic Records. Black, M., 1989. No Frontiers [CD]. Dublin: Dara Records. Carter, B., 1975. Round Midnight [Album]. New York: Roulette. Clannad, 1980 Crann Úll [Album]. Dublin: Tara Records. Coughlan, M., 1987. Under the Influence [CD]. Dublin: WEA. Fitzgerald, E., 1956. Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook [Album]. New York: Verve. Franklin, A., 1968. Lady Soul [Album]. New York: Atlantic. Gaughan, D., 1981. Handful Of Earth [Album/CD]. Kent: Topic Records. Harte, F., 1998. 1798 The First Year of Liberty [CD]. Dublin: Hummingbird. Harte, F., 2004. The Hungry Voice [CD]. Dublin: Hummingbird. Holiday, B., 1951. Lover Man [Album]. New York: Decca. Jackson, M., 1982. Thriller [Album]. New York: Epic. Keane, D. and Faulkner, J., 1979. Broken Hearted I’ll Wander [Album]. Dublin: Mulligan. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, 1958. Sing A Song Of Basie [Album]. Chicago: ABC- Paramount. Matheson, K., 1996. The Dreaming Sea [CD]. Wiltshire: Survival Records. McCarthy, J., 1991. The Song of the Singing Horseman [CD]. Dublin: Mulligan. McFerrin, B. and Corea, C., 1992. Play [CD]. New York: Blue Note. Mitchell, J., 1975. The Hissing Of Summer Lawns [Album]. New York: Asylum Records. Mitchell, J., 1979. Mingus [Album]. New York: Asylum Records. Moloney. M., 2002. Far From The Shamrock Shore [CD]. Newton, NJ: Shanachie . Moore, C., 1984. Ride On [Album/Cassette]. Dublin: WEA. Mulqueen, A., 1992. Mo Ghrása Thall Na Déise [CD]. Inverin: Cló Iar-Chonnacht Ní Dhomhnaill, M., 1976. Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill [Album]. Dublin: Gael Linn. O’Connell, M., 1987. Western Highway [Album/Cassette]. Dublin: Raglan Records. Ó Lionáird, I., 1997. The Seven Steps To Mercy • Seacht gCoiscéim Na Trocaire [CD]. Wiltshire: Real World.

138 Odetta, 1959. My Eyes Have Seen [Album]. New York: Vanguard. Parsons, N., 1999. Blackbirds & Thrushes [CD]. New Canaan, CT: Green Linnet. Seeger, P., 1979. Different Therefore Equal [Album]. Washington DC: Folkways Simone, N., 1959. Little Girl Blue [Album]. New York: Bethlehem Records. Uí Cheallaigh, Á., 1992. Idir Dhá Chomhairle - In Two Minds [CD]. Dublin: Gael Linn. Vaughan, S., and The Count Basie Orchestra, 1981. Send in the Clowns [Album]. Beverly Hills: Pablo today. Wonder, S., 1976. Songs in the Key of Life [Album]. Detroit: Tamla Motown.

139 Personal Discography

Casey, K. (1997) Songlines [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie Roger The Miller She Is Like the Swallow Ballad of Accounting Shamrock Shore Martinmas Time An Buachaillín Bán The Creggan White Hare The Song of Wandering Aengus One I Love The World Turned Upside Down (The Diggers' Song) The Labouring Man's Daughter

Casey, K. (2000) Seal Maiden: A Celtic Musical [CD], Ashland, OH: Music for Little People We're Going Sailing The Silkie Song The Seasons The Wriggly Eels The Waves Down in The Ocean The Song of the Seal Seoithín The Loony Moon We're Going Sailing (Reprise)

Casey, K. (2001) The Winds Begin to Sing [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie Who Put the Blood The King's Shilling Weary of Lying Alone Éirigh Suas a Stóirín Eppie Morrie Strange Fruit Where Are You Tonight I Wonder Buile Mo Chroí You Brought Me Up The Snows They Melt the Soonest The Liberty Tree

Casey, K. (2003) Distant Shore [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie Distant Shore Another Day Song of Lies The Curra Road The Ballad of Tim Evans Just A Note

140 Lord MacDonald's Quiet of The Night Bata Is Bóthar (The Stick and The Road) The Four Loom Weaver The Jute Mill Song

Casey, K. (2005) Chasing the Sun [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie Chasing The Sun When Will We All Be Free The World Looks Away This Time Will Pass The Brown and The Yellow Ale Lady Mary Anne Mother Earth's Revenge Freedom Song The Yellow Furze The Keg of Brandy Waiting for The Snow Bright Winter's Day Jimmy Whelan

Casey, K. (2008) Ships in the Forest [CD], Cork: Crow Valley Music Love Is Pleasing Dunlavin Green Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye Black Is the Colour Town of Athlone Maidin Luan Chincíse The Fiddle and The Drum Erin's Lovely Home Ae Fond Kiss I Once Loved a Lass

Casey, K (2014) Two More Hours [CD], Cork: Crow Valley Music Two More Hours Sorrows Away Home Lovely Annie Fishes Will Fly Pacing The Dark Still I Stay Blind Woman Young and Beautiful Go to Sleep The Heron

141 Casey, K (2018) Hieroglyphs That Tell the Tale [CD], Glasgow: Vertical Hollis Brown Down in The Glen Man of God I’m Still Standing Here Sixteen Come Next Sunday In The Gutter You Are the Flower Doll in Cash’s Window Hold On Mary

Casey, K. and Doyle, J. (2010) Exile’s Return [CD], Nashville: Compass The False Lady Exiles Return Sailing Off to The Yankee Land Sally Grier The Bay of Biscay Little Drummer Girl Madam I'm A Darling The Nightingale False Lover John The Shipyard Slips The Flower of Finae

Childsplay (2018) The Bloom of Youth [CD], Boston: Chilsdplay Records Cuckanandy Sailing Off To Yankeeland The Fiddle And The Drum Lovely Annie

Cooney, S. and MacDonald, A. (2010) The Highland Sessions Vol. 1 [CD], Edinburgh: Whirlie Records Buile Mo Chroí

Cooney, S. and MacDonald, A. (2010) The Highland Sessions Vol. 2 [CD], Edinburgh: Whirlie Records A Chomaraigh Aoibhinn Ó

Douglas, J. and Bain, A. (2010) Transatlantic Sessions 4 Vol. 1 [CD], Edinburgh: Whirlie Records The King’s Shilling

142 Douglas, J. and Bain, A. (2010) Transatlantic Sessions 4 Vol. 2 [CD], Edinburgh: Whirlie Records Black is the Colour

Douglas, J. and Bain, A. (2010) Transatlantic Sessions 4 Vol. 3 [CD], Edinburgh: Whirlie Records Erin’s Lovely Home

Doyle, J. (2001) Evening Comes Early [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie The Wheels of the World

Laswell, B. (2000) Emerald Aether: Shape Shifting/Reconstructions of Irish Music [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie One I Love

McGoldrick, M. (2000) Fused [CD], Glasgow: Vertical Dónal Óg

O’Brien, T. (2001) Two Journeys [CD], Nashville: Sugar Hill Records The Demon Lover What Does the Deep Sea Say

Simon, A. (2007) Excalibur II (The Celtic Ring) [CD], Paris: EMI The Girl & the Demon

Solas (1996) Solas [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie Níl na Lá I Wonder What's Keeping My True Love Tonight Johnny's Gone for a Soldier The Newry Highwayman Sliabh Geal gCua Na Féile

Solas (1997) Sunny Spells & Scattered Showers [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie The Wind That Shakes the Barley Aililiu Na Gamhna The Unquiet Grave The Maid on the Shore Vanished Like the Snow Adieu Lovely Nancy

Solas (1998) The Words That Remain [CD], Newton, NJ: Shanachie

143 Pastures of Plenty Song of Choice I Am a Maid That Sleeps in Love A Chomaraigh Aoibhinn Ó Sráid an Chloig

Solas (2006) Reunion: A Decade of Solas [CD/DVD], Nashville: Compass Pastures of Plenty The Newry Highwayman Níl na Lá

Various (1998) Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery [CD], Salem, MA: Rykodisc Dónal Óg

Various (2000) Ceol Tacsaí [CD], Glasgow: Vertical Sliabh Geal gCua

Various (2000) Síol/Seed: Artists Supporting Freedom of Biodiversity [CD], Clare: Magherabaun Records The Sun is Burning

Various (2001) Celtic Christmas: Silver Anniversary Edition [CD], Mill Valley, CA: Windham Hill On a Winter’s Day

Various (2003) Double Dose - Live from Studio A Volume 9 [CD], Columbus, OH: WCBE Song of Choice

Various (2004) Other Voices, Songs from a Room 2 [CD], Dublin: Dara Records The Quiet of the Night

Various (2006) Magic Nights in The Lobby Bar [CD], Cork: Lobby Records Chasing the Sun

Various (2007) A Christmas Celtic Sojourn Live [CD/DVD], Burlington, MA: Rounder O Holy Night

Various (2008) Absolutely Irish [CD/DVD], Nashville: Compass

144 The King’s Shilling

Various (2010) Crowd Around the Mic Volume 14 [CD], Spindale, NC: WNCW 16 Comes Next Sunday/ Aililiu Na Gamhna

Various (2014) A Prairie Home Companion- Duets 2 [CD], Minneapolis, MN: HighBridge Mary

Winter, P. (1999) Celtic Solstice [CD], Connecticut: Living Music Golden Apples of the Sun Sweet Comeraghs

145 Appendices Appendix 1: Fiction-based account of my relationship with Frank Harte Transcriptions of Frank Harte and Karan Casey May 2005 I am sitting at home in Cork city in 2016. It is October and the view from my bedroom is autumnal and bright. I have decided to transcribe Frank’s tapes or more exactly all of the mini-discs I have of him singing. Niall my husband who saves EVERYTHING, has salvaged and found this old cardboard box for me and delivered it to me. I am thankful. I am so glad to see this old tattered box. It is actually a box that carried cassettes. That’s how old it is! I have mixed feeling around transcribing Frank. I miss him still and I think of him nearly every day especially when I am teaching as so much of my own teaching can actually be attributed to him. His gentleness, his honesty, his “that’s a great song, why don’t you sing that? That would suit you. That’s a great song. What do you mean it’s not for you. It is, learn it! When you are an old crone sitting in the corner sure you can sing that song.” He would roar laughing at my face and say here let’s just sing it. Also I feel that there is something sacred about these tapes and that in listening to him I will be dredging up an awful lot of old memories. But I have started so I will keep going. The tape starts off with Frank singing “Johnny I hardly knew ya”. Sliding up to the “arhoo” which is something I thought I had conjured up myself. My immediate feeling is one of familiarity and coming home. His voice is so ingrained in my mind. I put myself back into that room in Chapelizod by the Liffey with the swans swaying gently outside, cruising up and down the river in their splendour and luminous white robes and the rain invariably drumming away on the water. Warm, tucked up inside, the heating blasting away up to ninety. The cup of tea in hand and Frank about to sing. Time, time, time is what Frank Harte gave me. So much of it. He was always there, available, eager to talk about songs and poetry and love and life and what was in the news, the North, the ceasefire, will it hold, the bankers, the bastards, Yeats, Paula Meehan, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Christy Moore and last but not least himself, the ‘Great one’ as Mick Moloney would muse. We had listened to his new album twice over already. Anyhow I digress… the tape or the mini-disc. Frank sings “Johnny I hardly knew ya” with different verses. I didn’t get the tape rolling at the very start….

146

Appendix 2: Song Lyrics

Rocks of Bawn (Traditional) Come all ye loyal heroes wherever you may be. Don't hire with any master till you know what your work will be For you will rise up early from the clear day light till the dawn And you never will be able for to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

Rise up, gallant Sweeney, and give your horse some hay And give them a good feed of oats before they stray away Don't feed them on soft turnip that grow out on your green lawn Or they never will be able for to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

My curse upon you, Sweeney boy, for you have me nearly robbed You are sitting by the fireside with your duidín in your gob You are sitting by the fireside now from the clear daylight till dawn And you never will be able for to plough the Rocks of Bawn

My shoes they are well worn and my stockings they are thin My heart is always trembling for fear that they might give in My heart is always trembling now from the clear daylight till the dawn And I never will be able for to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

I wish that Queen of England would call for me in time And place me in a regiment all in my youth and prime I'd fight for Ireland's glory from the clear daylight till dawn And I never would return again to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan) Special Rider Music Hollis Brown he lived on the outside of town x2 With his wife and five children And his cabin broken down

147

He looked for work and money and he walked the ragged mile x2 His children are so hungry They don't even know how to smile

Your baby's eyes look crazy now they're tugging at your sleeve x2 You walk the floor and wonder why With every breath you breathe

The rats have got your flour now bad blood has got your mare x2 Is there anyone who knows Is there anyone who cares?

You prayed to the Lord above to please send you a friend x2 Your empty pockets tell you That you don’t have any friends

Your babies crying louder it's pounding on your brain x2 Your wife's screams are stabbing you Like the dirty driving rain

Your grass it is turning black there's no water in your well x2 You spent your last lone dollar On seven shotgun shells

Way out in the wilderness a cold coyote calls x2 Your eyes fix on the shotgun That's hanging on the wall

Your brain is a-bleeding, and your legs can't seem to stand x2 Your eyes fix on the shotgun That you're holding in your hand

There's seven breezes a-blowing, all around the cabin door x2

148 Seven shots ring out Like the ocean's pounding roar

There’s seven people dead, on that south Dakota farm (x2) Somewhere in the distance There are seven new people born (x3)

Home (words: Paula Meehan, music: Karan Casey) I am blind woman finding my way home By the map of a tune When the song that is in me Is the song I hear from the world It’s not written down, I don’t remember the words But I know when I hear it I’ll have made it myself And I’ll be home, I’ll be home Home, home, home, home

This morning a letter arrived in the nine o’clock post The department of historical reparation Ah who do I blame? The priests, my father, myself Tick the box provided I’m burning my soapbox and I’m taking the very next train I’m a citizen of nowhere With nothing to my name (x2)

Chorus The wise women say You must live in your own skin Call it home No matter how broken you are Misused by the world You can heal

149

I’m on my last journey Though my lines are all wonky They spell me a map And it makes sense Where is the song That is in me It’s a song I hear from the world I’ll set my burdens down and sleep The spot that I now lie at last is the place That I call home It’s the place that I call home.

Down in the Glen (Karan Casey) I will meet you down in the glen my love Deep down in the glen my love The sunlight it will fall it will fall down at your feet When we meet, my love

I’ll sing a rebel song for you, All the rebel songs for you I’ll sing them loud, I’ll sing them proud Sing them long, sing them strong, all night long, my love

I know you will appear as the evening shadows fade Down in the west, my love I know you’ll take my hand and to my lips you’ll press The kiss I love the best in all the land

I’ll sing a rebel song for you, All the rebel songs for you I’ll sing them loud, I’ll sing them proud Sing them long, sing them strong, all night long.

150 I know you must away before the end of day For your rebel heart you must depart I’ll put all the stars out there for to dress your lovely hair And the moon will be the host of the air

And I’ll sing a rebel song for you, All the rebel songs for you I’ll sing them loud, I’ll sing them proud Sing them long, sing them strong, all night long Till all the women are free, just like you and me My love There like a pin in your hair the dark sings softly to the moon. Oh oooh

Lovely Annie (Karan Casey) I will sing for you a lullaby, a lullaby, a lullaby I will sing it so sweetly, go gently, lovely Annie, my lovely Annie

For you’re gone girl, gone girl, gone girl, gone From my world my lovely Annie, my lovely Annie For you’re gone girl, gone girl, gone girl, gone From my world my lovely Annie, my lovely Annie

All is quiet there’s stillness everywhere, everywhere, mmmm And the world keeps on turning, but you’re not standing there, standing there, mmm

For you’re gone girl, gone girl, gone girl, gone From my world my lovely Annie, my lovely Annie For you’re gone girl, gone girl, gone girl, gone From my world my lovely Annie, my lovely Annie

And the moon and the stars, yes they while away the hours, the hours, mmm And the sun keeps on shining but you’re not standing there, standing there, mmm

151

And if you could just appear for one hour in the day And I’d tell you just how much I love you so, I love you so, I love you so Aaaa This is a lullaby, a lullaby

The King's Shilling (Iain Sinclair) Oh my love has left me with bairnes twa And that's the last of him I ever saw He's joined the army and marched to war He took the shilling He took the shilling and he’s off to war

Come laddies come, hear the cannons roar Take the King's shilling and you’re off to war

Well did he look as he marched along With his kilt and sporran and his musket gun And the ladies tipped him as he marched along He sailed out by He sailed out by the Broomielaw

The pipes did play as he marched along And the soldiers sang out a battle song March on, march on, cried the Captain gay For King and country For King and country we will fight today

Come laddies come, hear the cannons roar Take the King's shilling and we're off to war

The battle rattled to the sound of guns

152 And the bayonets flashed in the morning sun The drums did beat and the cannons roared And the shilling didn't seem The shilling didn't seem much worth the war

Come laddies come, hear the cannons roar Take the King's shilling and we're off to war

Well the men they fought and the men did fall Cut down by bayonets and musket ball And many of these brave young men Would never fight for Would never fight for the King again

Come laddies come, hear the cannons roar Take the King's shilling and we're off to war Come laddies come, hear the cannons roar Take the King's shilling and you’ll die in war

Man of God (Eliza Gilkyson) The cowboy came from out of the west With his snakeskin boots and his bulletproof vest Gang of goons and his big war chest Fortunate son he was doubly blessed Corporate cronies and the chiefs of staff Bowing to the image of the golden calf Starting up wars in the name of God's son Going to blow us all away to kingdom come

Man of God, man of God That’s not the teachings of a man of God Man of God, man of God That’s not the preaching of a man of God

153

Coalition of the willing and the judgmental Patricians, politicians, and the fundamentalists You never have to tell them how the money is spent You never have to tell them where their freedom went Homophobes in the high command Waiting for the rapture like it's Disneyland Hide all the bodies from out of view Channel all the treasure to the chosen few

Man of God, man of God That’s not the teachings of a man of God Man of God, man of God That’s not the preaching of a man of God

If I could I surely would Stand on the rock where Moses stood Look out people now we're going to get fleeced By a wolf masquerading as a man of peace

Jesus said blessed are the meek Jesus said you got to turn the other cheek Jesus said help the poor and the weak If he lived today he'd be a liberal freak All the money changers would be out on the street Weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth Me I'm waiting on the reckoning day When the whole world going to rise up and say

Man of God, man of God That’s not the teachings of a man of God Man of God, man of God That’s not the preaching of a man of God (x2)

154

Ballad of Accounting (Ewan MacColl) In the morning we built the city In the afternoon walked through its streets Evening saw us leaving We wandered through our days as if they would never end All of us imagined we had endless time to spend We hardly saw the crossroads And small attention gave To landmarks on the journey from the cradle to the grave, Cradle to the grave, cradle to the grave

Did you learn to dream in the morning? Abandon dreams in the afternoon? Wait without hope in the evening? Did you stand there in the traces and let them feed you lies? Did you trail along behind them wearing blinkers on your eyes? Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? Did you thank them for their scorn? Did you ask for their forgiveness for the act of being born, Act of being born, act of being born?

Did you alter the face of the city? Did you make any change in the world you found? Or did you observe all the warnings? Did you read the trespass notices, did you keep off the grass? Did you shuffle off the pavement just to let your betters pass? Did you learn to keep your mouth shut? Were you seen and never heard? Did you learn to be obedient and jump to at a word, Jump to at a word, jump to at a word?

Did you ever demand any answers? The who, the what or the reason why?

155 Did you ever question the setup? Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best? Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest? Did you settle for the shoddy? Did you think it right To let them rob you right and left and never make a fight, Never make a fight, never make a fight?

What did you learn in the morning? How much did you know in the afternoon? Were you content in the evening? Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school? Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool? Did the place where you were living Enrich your life and then Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men, All your fellow men, all your fellow men?

156 Appendix 3: Questionnaire in Dolan’s 25th April 2018

Do you attend concerts regularly? Yes No

Do you attend singing concerts regularly? Yes No

What is your initial response to tonight’s performance?

What insight (if any) did this performance give you into the workings of being a creative singer?

How would you describe this style of singing?

Did you feel empowered in any way by the songs that were sung at the gig? If yes which ones and why?

Did you feel that a connection was made between the singer and the audience?

If yes, what kind of a connection?

Any other responses / thoughts / constructive feedback / critique?

157 Appendix 4: Call to action Facebook post.

Karan Casey shared your post. Published by Karan Casey · March 2017

Karan Casey

Hi Folks I am in Long Island City in a hotel room musing, looking over at the Queensborough Bridge. I am supposed to be working! This Friday I will be singing in Carnegie Hall in N.Y. with Lúnasa. I have fought so long and hard to get here. I can't wait! I think it is sold out. I will be singing the song 'The Kings Shilling.' I wanted to write this post though because I wanted to say exactly what singing this song means to me. Sometimes when I get out on stage I get waylaid, with fear, pressure or just the way the gig goes, you can't contain a performance. Anyway I have long been trying to make a difference in the world and I wanted to honour this in our time of great social upheaval with a considered and more practical approach to my performances. This is what I hope to say. Also this is an attempt to get people out on Sunday next the 5th of March to support the 'Sanctuary Sessions.' Keep up the hearts. What singing the ‘Kings Shilling’ means for today. I got this song from Frank Harte, the great song collector and Irish singer, a man who was very good to me. I met him up in the Catskills in 1995 and he took me under his wing and said “come here to me young one, I need to teach you a few decent songs”. And so he did. He changed the course of my life really setting me off on a pathway of these lovely songs. Irish song continues to be the real narrative of our country. We tell all our stories through these songs, often giving voice to the powerless and underprivileged and singing out against oppression. That is our gift to the world. We are very good with the old words. The King’s Shilling was written by Iain Sinclair and it calls for an end to violence. It speaks again to that time honoured Irish and Scottish tradition of defiance of speaking out against colonialism. A long line of thought that has never been broken. Colonialism has failed us all. It fails us today in Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia with famine raging. In Syria, with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing. We have to look after

158 these people. Justin Trudeau has just taken in 30,000 refugees. We can do that too. As an Irish woman the cultural memories that these events evoke are horrifying. For myself while we can talk about these bigger issues I see colonialism in all its guises. A powerful group making ‘other’ people feel small. A band of men coercing a woman. Making anyone feel small, fails us all. We have to lean into our shared sense of humanity now more than ever. I came to NY as an immigrant in 1993, I worked in the restaurants downtown where I worked with my Mexican brothers and sisters to put exotic food on the tables. I worked as a nanny where I minded a lovely little boy called Ted and went to the park every day and sat out with my sisters from the Caribbean in the beautiful sunshine of the East river. Tonight I am singing in Carnegie Hall. Immigrants are what make America good. And I love what is good about America, opening arms to the poor and underprivileged. Giving hope to the world. We are all immigrants here on the stage. So I stand in solidarity with all of the immigrants. There is no need to be banning Muslims or building walls, making people feel afraid. The only thing we need to build now are the pillars of social justice based on love and peace. So I stand in this legacy of the Irish folk singer. I have been standing here for twenty- five years, giving out really, sometimes very alone as a woman in a deeply misogynistic world we call the music industry, asking continually for a better world. I have fought long and hard to get here. So a better world is one which brings an end to poverty, brings absolute equality for women in all aspects of our lives and which brings an end to war mostly caused by greed. A nation is judged by its vulnerable and poor and how they are treated. Jim Larkin a great English man asked the Irish nation to get up off its knees. I am asking the same. We need to get up off our knees, fight the good cause and get out there and get active. Billy Bragg who recently spoke at the Folk Alliance asked that we put our empathy to action. Join the ‘Sanctuary Sessions’ on the 5th March to raise money for the ACLU. Every generation has to fight for its freedoms. I have had to fight for my own. I intend to keep fighting the only way I know and that is by singing. So I ask you respectfully to join me in singing out for our shared humanity. If ye need a song for Sunday this is a good one! If you are somewhere else in the world you can still show solidarity and sing or play somewhere. Please place your trust in one another and come together in peace and love.

159 "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." Mother Jones.

160 Appendix 5: FairPlé speech Good morning everybody and you are all very welcome to ‘Rising Tides’ on what is a momentous day for FairPlé. It marks the culmination of more than seven month’s work from many committed people. As a starting point for our weekend’s deliberations, I want to set those months in context for us this morning and tell the story of that timeframe: the hopes and the fears, the laughter and the tears, the merciless soul searching and endless hard work that have got us this far along the way.

As you are aware, FairPlé is a movement of people founded to change the working environment for women in the worlds of traditional and folk music. We are advocating for deep societal change: an improvement in the imbalance of line-ups that discriminates against female performers particularly instrumentalists, an end to sexual harassment, an end to the macho cultural bravado that is endemic within the community.

We aim to deliver a code of practice and are working with the Arts Council towards a policy on dignity and respect for female performers.

We will soon have our Directory for female performers up and a sharing of the stories and truths about women’s lives in order to achieve these aims. And we are involved in organising a symposium on the 9th of February 2019 in collaboration with The Centre for Irish Studies in NUIG 2019 on women in Irish music.

How did we get here? Well, it all started as many women worldwide started to reframe how we were being treated in the workplace and particularly in the arts. We were inspired here in Ireland by Waking The Feminists and Sounding the Feminists and by the #MeToo movement in America. And of course, we were inspired by the strong women in Irish traditional and folk music and groups such as Macalla who have spoken out over the years.

Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin wrote a Facebook post in the summer of 2017 asking why there were so few women on the line-up at a festival in Killarney’s INEC. Niamh Dunne wrote into a festival, which had no women on the bill and received a lot of online abuse because of this. We all started talking back stage. It’s great when people

161 start speaking up and sharing our stories. There was a feeling of solidarity; it was dynamic, enriching and empowering for all of the community.

I ended up on a stage in January 2018 being the only women out of 17 performers and I spoke up about this. Síle Denvir after the gig leaned in to me and said “so needed, well done, what can we do.” Many people were very supportive on the night. The timbre of my speech that night was an impassioned and a passionate call for change. Also a bit ad hoc, as I gave out my email address and said we need to organise more gigs for women and include women more at gigs! And so here we are.

We believed then that some of the programming in Ireland is unconsciously biased against women; we acknowledged this then and still do today. We also crucially understand that we need to work to explain our point of view to bring people along with us to enact any real change. Then I wrote a Facebook post asking for a change in our thinking saying ‘It’s kind of alright for 1950/60s Ireland but hey this is 2018!’ I then rang Pauline Scanlon who was at that very moment in time rehearsing a piece with Úna Monaghan called “What we Haven’t Heard,” which is astonishingly a piece about gender balance. Serendipity or what? (This piece will be performed at the concert tomorrow night by the way so make sure you get there).

Meetings We then had a meeting in Dublin where 20 people showed up in the Lobby of Jury’s Inn, … which was followed on by another meeting in the Cobblestones … who very graciously supplied a venue, teas and coffees. 40 people showed up. Then we hit the ground running and decided (under serious time pressure) to apply for a grant for the Arts Council. Pauline Scanlon, Niamh Dunne, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Síle Denvir and Úna Monaghan and myself applied for the grant. And Ellie Byrne was also a great help to us.

Arts Council We were successful and are deeply indebted to them for their strong support and display of leadership in the arts; particularly Paul Flynn and Catherine Boothman who have been fielding so many of our questions. We are also indebted to Frank Connolly

162 campaigning for years with various left wing movements, who didn’t skip a beat and without hesitation said he would see if we could have Liberty Hall for the first FairPlé festival. We are very grateful to the MUI for the use of the building and indeed their endless patience with myself in changing the dates three times! Thank you Ethel Buckley and Karan O Loughlin.

Social Media www.FairPlé.com We then entered the world of social media, set up a website, and again were really helped by Eamon Murray. We received a huge amount of support and goodwill. The number of people ringing us and emailing to say “at last, and well done” was overwhelming. We then realised that this was an enormous amount of work and started to ask ourselves, are we mad? Clearly the answer is yes. However, we believe in what we are doing and that is our inspiration. So to stress we are a volunteer organisation, learning as we go.

We started to receive some kickback and abuse online as happens to many groups who try and effect social change. This became exhausting as we found a lot of our time being consumed with defending or explaining why women need equality. But we kept pushing the point home that in the end everyone benefits from a more enlightened society. We began really organising ourselves and it began to dawn on us that this was going to take time.

FairPlé Day: A day of Action: 9th of June Overwhelmingly though and not to forget the important part, people were ringing us and each other, engaging and talking, all over the country. We must have talked to nearly everyone in the country at this point. We definitely had ignited a much needed conversation. These conversations led us to see that although imbalanced line-ups was the most obvious issue, there are a myriad of issues within the world of folk and trad at professional and non-professional levels (and everything in between) which need to be teased out and addressed.

We decided to have an event on the 9th of June to celebrate the creativity of Irish women in sessions especially. 28 events took place worldwide on that day, the Mansion House in Dublin attended by the then Lord Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha, Sabina

163 Higgins, Ennis, Boston, New York, and the Irish Arts centre, Belfast, Rostrevor, Vienna… and more importantly Cork. It was a resounding bell of success chiming out for the sisterhood and for change. Mairéad O’Donnell, Niamh Parsons and Niamh Ní Charra being the main organisers of this.

Turn of events resulting for the day of action: Stories People started emailing in with stories and things took a turn away from the discussion on gender balance and quotas to sexual assault. People tagged one particular online discussion about this onto my Facebook page. It has to said it was a long few weeks. While I think Facebook can be a format for social change a large measure of me thinks it is just a toxic environment. We had been discussing privately at length how to deal with the issue of sexual harassment and assault and now we really just had to tackle it head on. It was an extremely difficult time for us all as sexual harassment is a reality for many female performers. To be very clear there is a problem. Behind the hideous clearly visible bias in the line- ups and work opportunities for women lies the truth of demoralisation, demeaning attitudes, sexual innuendo and indeed the harsh brutal merciless reality of sexual assault. This needs to rooted out and we need to change this. We took advice from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre about how we might approach this. There is also an issue with the endless dampening down of female creativity and strength. Constantly having to reassert ourselves. It’s actually the small things that mount up in your head. Wear you down. They pile up in your head and it can feel as if you are going mad. They gnaw at your gut. And to be creative you need to feel safe. Compassion is the gateway to the imagination so if you can’t walk into your head in peace it makes thing more difficult. Women need access to the vehicles in our society that allow us to fulfil our potential as music makers. We need to be treated with respect and dignity at all times and to have more access, support and respect in the workplace. We hope that feedback from today will begin to provide us with that basis. Thank you the many people who are helping us formulate a code of practice, especially Kate Barry.

Company/ Business Alongside of this was of course the practical side of things. Kate Barry, Jessie Cawley, Stu Fletcher, Jane Cassidy and Maurice Leyden were beavering away at the Company

164 papers, the bank account, (we actually got a gig from Rose in the AIB Cork for musicians in Cork as she turned out to be a feminist herself!) and we were helped a lot during this process by Mikey Smith who answered a lot of questions from myself. So we are set up as an Incorporated Company with our own constitution and are protected that way.

Úna’s Survey In trying to find a way to talk about the stories Úna Monaghan has set up an inspired survey asking for people to share stories in a safe environment anonymously. It is linked into the FairPlé website. It would be really great if people could share their stories. FairPlé would like to thank Úna profoundly for her hard work, steering it through the ethics committee at The University of Cambridge, and the academic world and indeed the traditional music community. Úna will present a research paper on her findings at a symposium in February which I will tell you about in a minute.

Directory FairPlé would also like to thank Niamh Dunne, Eamon Murray, Damien McKee, Liam Bradley and Seán Óg Graham (Beoga) for their financial contribution to the cause and for funding the Directory for female performers for two years. It is extremely generous of them. And we thank Rusty Weise for all his hard work as well. This will be a great resource for concert and festival programmers. Niamh Ní Charra and Úna Ní Fhlannagáin were also instrumental in this alongside Stu Fletcher.

Filming Thank you to Alan Doherty who has been filming for months now and taking it all in and commenting in his own inimitable style on events.

Communications We thank profusely Aibhlín McCrann for all her help with our communications and for her enormous emotional support - especially to myself and reigning in my grandiose statements.

FairPlé would like to sincerely thank Niamh Dunne and Pauline Scanlon for being the primary organisers for this weekend and for doing an extraordinary amount of work.

165

Symposium (9th of February) A great day of talks and music is being held on the 9th of February in NUIG, where academics and performers will be teasing out the issue of gender. We welcome any papers which need to be received by the 15th of Sept. And we thank Síle Denvir, Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, Verena Commins, Úna Monaghan and Lillis Ó Laoire so much for their work and effort in providing a venue and sourcing funding for this endeavour. This symposium will not just be for academics and we encourage performers and anyone interested in trad/folk music to attend this event.

Finally thank you to all our supporters for their great commitment. Most importantly, we are looking at this weekend as a consultation process with the people within the traditional and folk music world in Ireland. We chose our name very carefully and the word ‘plé’ (meaning discussion) was no accident. We are hopeful that the conversations with the listeners and lovers of music, teachers, academics, performers, industry people, session players, singing clubs, dancers, musicians, agents, advertisers, press people, radio heads, TV personalities, liars, schemers, dreamers, advocates, socialists, sound engineers, roadies, republican socialists, feminists people who want to hear and to listen to women, union organisers - the whole gamut, will help us all to find a way to move forward together that is creative and indeed adding to our society as a whole. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it, and we want all people to be able to see themselves up on that stage, for our children to know in their bones that women are equal. So women, men, minorities, diverse groups, immigrants, the whole lot that makes up a new and inclusive Ireland can be cherished and loved for all that we are. I even want to thank our detractors, as in so many ways you have challenged us and made us think. The resistors have also though made us more determined to keep going. With the trolling and emojis and angry faces and cruelty it shows just how much we are needed. Adding indeed to our hurt by discrediting our truths.

But we know that we are doing the right thing.

Ireland is filled with an extraordinarily talented female band of women who are vibrant, brimming with creativity, a really well educated group of female performers pushing at the glass ceiling. Even to the detractors who say we should be working on the broader

166 social issues, we are! Most of us are involved in many left wing thinking and feminist social movements. And this movement is crucial to female performers of course who need and deserve to earn a living wage. To effect wider societal change each community has to have an honest look at their own small patch and constantly aim for a better way of doing things. As artists, we have a particular responsibility to do this.

Finally, and really finally I would also like to thank ourselves, FairPlé, women are often under-appreciated, certainly not thanked enough for all that we do. So I am thanking us all for allowing ourselves to grow and be nurtured together, for giving ourselves permission to be stronger, for making mistakes and letting each other do that, for having the courage in this important historical juncture in time when Ireland is relearning how to love its women folk, to speak up. Thanking us all that we stood up, stood up together, stood our ground, playing and singing together and are being counted.

Enjoy the weekend and thank you for being here to support and adding your voices to our deliberations - Ar scáth a chéile a mhairimid.

Beir Bua.

Karan Casey (8th of September 2018)

167 Appendix 6: I Walked into My Head 4th April 2019

I WALKED INTO MY HEAD

1: Siúil a Rúin Song - Karan at piano playing and singing.

I wish I was on yonder hill 'Tis there I would sit and cry my fill Until every tear it would turn a mill Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

I would sell my rock, I would sell my reel I would sell my only spinning wheel For to buy my love a sword of steel Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

And now my love he has gone to France To try his fortune to advance And if he returns, 'tis but a chance Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain I wish I had my heart again

168 And it’s vainly I think that I would not complain Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

2: I Walked into My Head Song-poem - Karan at piano talking and playing inside piano with playback from Niall at desk

I walked into my head Without any help from the drink Its walls were rancid with Screaming patterned dolls everywhere. The little dolls were all lined up Linking hands and talking in tongues Thousands of them were reciting their Incantations of hate out into the air Putting in on me, putting in on me Finding no peace, finding no peace Ag cuir isteach orm, ag cuir isteach orm

I don’t know what I expected to find Some wild flowers maybe, the odd cowslip Violets and primroses smiling from the ditches, A colony of foxgloves trumpeting purple from the back of their throats Or some foolish hopeful hawthorn bride Sitting in the ditch waiting for her Photograph to be taken

You are at the bottom of every corridor of my mind Kneeling down, crying I can’t get you to stand up And walk towards me Only your grief exists, only your grief exists.

169 He is everywhere, his face etched All over the putrid reeking walls Laughing out loud keeping in all the secrets The man of the match, cock of the walk But in another room he is shrunken down Snivelling and shivering All broken I close the door to that room And I walk on. I walk on.

In another room you are crying With the dark curtains pulled over all day The room is dark and dank and Pulsating with fear Tablets everywhere Tablets everywhere, Smoke, smoke in the air Smoke, smoke in the air Stains on the floor Stains on the floor Stains on the floor

The other fellow is trying to get us To help ourselves, busy, busy, busy building beds For us to lie on. Busy, busy, busy. He’s like some mad bristly bush Screaming back at me As brazen as you like. He’s afraid too. He’s afraid too but what can he do What can he do.

All around the dolls are reciting Their incantations of hate. Putrid with fear their eyes are like rats

170 Rounding about in their heads Made up beds, brown and red While their tails whip in and out I don’t seem to be in here Even in my own head I’ve learnt to walk more calmly Now I’m up off my knees Just like Jim Larkin said

Ahh I’ve afforded you these notions girl He is back at the bar, true to form, visibly shook But still up for the fight He has had nine lives and he will have nine more He drinks from the devil’s own skull All his hawthorn leaves are dying on his branches All the gorse petals have been mulched into the ground. He drinks himself down into that beautiful abyss Ah that beautiful abyss That keeps all the pain and the grief away All the anger at bay But the hounds are at the door Hounds are at the door

There are no animals in my head Slugs are everywhere, squelching under my feet Stuck out between my toes I must have no shoes on. So I touch the slimy walls Squash the slugs Hear the demented prayers There’s no blue in here Only black and grey secrets and brown I can feel everything I can feel everything

171

And I want to leave this place I want to go, I want to grow I want to throw away the artifice I want to scream outside, strip down the face Pull away the props

And every breath, Every note, Every nuance, Every word, Every phrase, Every song is a push against the dark I am not afraid anymore I am not afraid anymore

3: Aililiú na gamhna Song - Karan at piano singing and playing

Is iníon d'aoire mé Féinig gan amhras Do bhíodh ina cónaí Cois taobh na Leamhna Bhí bothán agam féin ann Is fuinneog i gceann de Fad a bhíodh an bainne ag téamh agam 'Sea ghlaofainn ar na gamhna

Aililiú na gamhna Na gamhna bána Aililiú na gamhna Na gamhna b'iad a b'fhearr liom Aililiú na gamhna

172 Na gamhna geala bána Na gamhna maidin shamhraidh Ag damhsa ar na bánta

Faightear dom cana Is faightear dom bhuarach Is faightear dom soitheach Ina gcuirfead mo chuid uachtair Ceolta sí na cruinne bheith Á síorchur i m'chluasa Ba bhinne liomsa géimneach na mbó Ag teacht chun buaile

Rachaimid ar an aonach Is ceannóimid gamhna Is cuirfimid ar féar iad Amach ins na gleannta Íosfaidh siad an féar Is barr an aitinn ghallda Is tiocfaidh siad abhaile chun An bhainne i gcóir an tSamhraidh

4: Voices Rant - Karan moving from piano to centre stage talking And playback from Niall at desk

The voices are all here this morning Delighted to get the early morning call. They gather together, congregate together, play together At the top of the tall, tall trees Yapping like a shower of crows. We can always rely on each other

They thump into the back of my head,

173 They thump into my amygdala Releasing and unleashing the unconscious Memories the mother of all muses

I line them all up on the mantelpiece of my mind Separate them out, then polish them one by one. I spit on them and shine them up some more Getting them ready to hurl at people.

Bird seed for brains girl, That’s all you have girl Between the two ears. Look it’s like a thin white line Of nothing, look, from here to here. Blankety fucking blank. Showing me with his hands a yard apart. His fingers pinched and blanched together There’s more brains in a bucket of shite, huh Do you think you’ll get a man dressed like that? Well I did, a few actually. You stupid fucking cunt. You stupid fucking cunt.

The memories cloud into my mind’s eye The stark, airlessness of that tight space On my own at the bar the first there waiting

When he sidled up to me at the bar, A big, tall, broad man Looming and leering over me

His face bends in before my minds-eye. I catch sight of those entering on the periphery Chimeric, caught up in the afterglow of the gig

174

Everything here is meant, measured, thought out Nice to see you Karan and nice to feel you too Big rough hand squeezing high on my thigh

Purple walls whirl, mauve seats sweat, Silent, still, shocked I try to laugh it off, Searching in despair for a pair of other eyes

All averted, empty I sit defeated, shamed By that well-worn path, not my true self

Maybe you could curse him as a poet of old May the widows curse melt you ______Like snow in the noon day sun

For we can’t kill the crack, Sure we can’t, no it’s all about the fucking crack Like my time sitting in the back of the van Knitting, one plain, one purl Breathe in, breathe out When the young fellow gets in and says Ah where were ye last night lads, The fucking crack we had Jaysus you should have seen your woman The pair on her The fucking crack, huh the fucking crack

I live in a country that does not know how to love its women I am the tongue, I am her tongue I am here and I am listening, I am the small roundy ear that has heard it all. I believe her. I believe her. I am stone, I am sea, I am wind, I am mountain, I am river I am gorse and aitinn, blazing back at you as brazen as you like.

175 I am the hussy at the street corner causing trouble.

I used to live in a country that bowed down to the men in skirts That hushed everything up, said stop making a fuss, be calm Stop being such a drama queen.

I am tired of being kind, and reserve the right to lose my mind, I am tired of being understanding which is to forgive. Tired of being patient and wise, viewing my demise.

For truth is the daughter of time The springs of justice will rise to rhyme Hope and love are our lifeline Freedom can you hear her chime

Let’s take the road less travelled Through this stormy weather Let’s rise up and stand together

Sister I am here for you I am here and I’m listening too Sister I am here for you

5: Songs Karan centre stage solo singing and some vocal effects Vanished Like the Snow 23:23 Tell me where did Helen go This is where she had her lover All the while they come and they go Where they have gone we can’t discover This is where she had her lover All the while they come and they go Where they have gone we can’t discover

176 She has vanished like the snow

She is Like the Swallow 24:37 She is like the swallow that flies on high She is like the river that never runs dry She is as the sun beaming on the lee shore I love my love but love is no more

A maiden into her garden did go For to pluck her some wild primrose The more she did pluck it the more she did pull Until this maiden’s heart it was full

Out of these roses she made a bed A scarlet pillow for her head She laid her down no word she did speak And then this maidens heart it did break

Eppie Morrie 25;54 Four and twenty highway men came from the Carron side To steal away Eppie Morrie ‘cause she would nay be a bride, a bride She would nay be a bride

Har away from me Willie Har away from me There’s not a man in all Strathdon Shall wedded be by me, by me Shall wedded be by me (repeat chorus)

The Maid on the Shore 26:39 Oh the men they were mad and the men they were sad Deeply sung down in despair O To see her go way with her booty so gay Her rings and her things and her fine fare o

177 Her rings and her things and her fine fair o

The Snows they Melt the Soonest 27:17 So never bid me farewell for no farewell I’ll receive You will lie with me my love and kiss and take your leave I’ll wait here till the woodcocks call and the martin takes its wing For the snows they melt the soonest when the wings begin to sing.

6: Heathrow Again Song-poem - Karan centre stage talking and with playback from Niall

L’Occitane, Harrods with real tea. Clarins neon red and white blue light Burberry with those stupid jackets Nivea knows how to treat you baby, Nivea knows how to treat a lady Floating about like an alien Gucci refashioning Matisse as a handbag

In the queue I spot my red boots, Covered and caked in mud From this morning when we Crossed over the tank field Of Gort Álainn.

I held your small warm hand and Listened to your chatter, charmed, Your worries, your pale small face, Searching mine for the answers to

Infidelities in the classroom, Slights made bigger, Sensitivities made crimson, How I have tried to be gentle,

178 To make the pain go way

My mother’s oval green eyes. Beseeching me not to go. Shadows of anger herd through. Then you see someone and skip on And let me go. Just like that.

For you are the flower in the bright green field. Gathering the rain in the palm of your hand. You are the branches curling green Humming to the stars that are in between You are the snowdrop in Spring leaning in, to view Your newly pressed white fragile dress You are the Alder in March with your honeyed nut-brown hair You are the primrose in all of my dawns You are the hem of the ocean that sings

Turning, trudging back Keeping going, Into the clear pale grey Gort Álainn air I see your cheekbones high in Hartnett’s mackerel skies

Keep safe, stay safe Keep safe, stay safe My heart aches

Please wait for me I can't give you everything But please wait for me.

7: I am not your muse Song Karan piano and singing Words by Paula Meehan

179

I am not your muse I’m not that creature in the painting With the beautiful body Venus on the half shell

Can you not see I’m an ordinary woman Tied to the moon and her muse

Sure I’d like to see you in love’s blindness Cherish the comfort of your art The way it makes me whole and shiny Smooths out the kinks of my habitual distress

Oh it never mentions how I stumble into each day Fucked up and penniless on the verge of whining at my lot

Look at you now rapt, besotted There’s not a gesture that’s true on the canvas Not a droopy breast not a wrinkle Nor a grey hair in sight

But if keeps you happy Who am I to charge in Battle dressed to test your painted doll Against the harsh light I live by Against the brutal merciless sky

Can you not see I’m an ordinary woman Tied to the moon and her muse (x2)

7: Daughter Dear Song Karan piano and singing

I am lying here

180 Daughter dear I have something that I wish to whisper In your small round ear

What is it you wish say Mama my dear The prayer in the rain It beats a sad familiar refrain

Chorus Mama I don’t like when you’re not here Mama I don’t like when you’re not here

For the worms crawl out And the worms they crawl in And they rub up and down against my skin For the worms crawl out And the worms they crawl in And they rub up and down against my skin

The snowdrop grows up out of my head There is nothing to be said The flower leans in to view her newly pressed White fragile dress Yes I remember that day When you made me the dress And I wouldn’t stay still and I caused you Quite an amount of distress

Chorus Mama I don’t like when you’re not here Mama I don’t like when you’re not here

For the worms crawl out

181 And the worms they crawl in And they rub up and down against my skin For the worms crawl out And the worms they crawl in And they rub up and down against my skin

What is it you wish to say When you came to visit today What is it you wish to whisper In my small round ear Mama my dear

8: Dublin Airport Carpark (Skywoman) Song-poem Karan at piano talking with playback and vocal effects

Sitting into the car, at last. High on nerves, no sleep, too much coffee, And notions of writing an opera. Fog hanging low down In the early Easter dawn, shifting, Drizzle and daze meld

Breath on the window pane Meeting the cold, fogged outside Wiping it away like I shouldn't Never got used to pressing buttons For things I can do with my hands.

Glad to be back in the grey. After six weeks of sunshine The old bones were missing the ache And longing for home. The old rain falls, softly

182 The old rain falls, softly

A gentle veil of mist Barely making an audible tune

Turning the key. No red lights, no yellow bits lighting up, No usual sound. Just a crunch. Keep trying but I’m flooding the engine.

My eyes are shut tight, sighing Seeing the dawn on the inside Feeling them flicker Opening them I see her

A witch, a harridan, A dream, an spéirbhean She’s looking straight at me She of the wood and field Of heddles and besom She sucks the cow’s udder And the devil is in her dance

The Devil is in her dance Hey look at her in those red pants Yeah the Devil is in her dance Hey look at her in those red pants

Her two paws praying Holding, hawking green. Her two tall tawny ears Searching for the old sounds Her grandmother's stolen grounds Her ancient ancestral home

183 Her leveret's lean-to levelled Her green grass torn up Replaced with scratchy stones Metallic beasts in lines of colour Progress?

9: NEW BABY Song-poem - Karan looking into the piano/cot Moving centre stage at end with playback

Your eyelids were perfect Tiny trace lines of violet In the pale small face Alas, alive and living Eyelashes growing By the millisecond out on the rims The whorl of your dark hair Made me sigh.

Look at the eye of her The old midwife laughed While running the tap To lull you to ancient sleep. Waters flowing, Internal systems Repeated and replaced You didn't obey us We couldn't fool you

Swaddled in the cot Still awake We all gazed at you. Oh she's pretty my mother said

184 And makes me feel All warm on the inside, woozy. Oh she's pretty my mother said And makes me feel All warm on the inside, woozy.

Later I could hear your howl From the other end of the ward. I knew you. Hurtling up the hall I couldn't get to you Fast enough, ever Hardly able to walk But I made it

I took you back then Insisted on keeping you So as I could admire you Some more.

Tiny red angry fists Curled up in a rage In the middle of the night Big purple heels Flying out Trying to feed you The first in generations I failed. We kept the whole ward awake. Distressed and dismayed We kept at it, Determined

The woman across the way

185 Leapt out of the bed Shoved into her tight jeans Crunched her feet Into the high heels Held onto her drip for balance I'm off for a fag girl She snarled That child is starving Would you ever give it a fuckin’ bottle.

I cried and cried Asked you if you were starving You didn't answer back Hushing you we went out In the hall the old midwife came along

Today you stand by the fridge Eating, nineteen and eating. You close your eyes and The same violet veins appear You are beautiful And I am never tired Of loving you My beautiful hungry girl

186 Appendix 7: Statistics on gender To give some idea of the scale of the problem of sexual harassment and assault in Ireland, Women’s Aid state that “One in five women experience some form of domestic violence in Ireland” (Women's Aid, 2018). For other statistics see below54 and “of the 209 women murdered in Ireland since 1996 [up until 2015], 86 women (55% of resolved cases) were killed by those closest to them - a current or former husband, partner or boyfriend” (Women's Aid, 2015). For a worldwide angle view “30,000 of the women intentionally killed in 2017 were killed by their current or former intimate partner ̶ someone they would normally expect to trust” (UNODC, 2018). And in America “In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner. That’s an average of three women every day” (National Organization for Women, n.d.) “Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes” (WCSAP, 2017). I want to stress that campaigning and engaging in social activism and channelling the stress and anger brought about by these realities can actually achieve and enact change. For instance, in some areas the equality of the sexes is improving. “The Irish Examiner’s comparison of figures from 2013 to the end of 2017 shows that the proportion of university professors who are women rose from 19% to 24%. Females now account for 34% of associate professors, up from 26%, and senior lecturer posts held by women are up from 35% to 41%” (Murray, 2018). The Irish Examiner’s figures55 on female university professors demonstrates that the number is rising after a proactive campaign to improve the situation. Similarly, with FairPlé many festivals did start booking more women and while the situation is not by any means resolved at least there has been some change. For myself some things are not changing quickly enough. For instance, quoting figures from the World Economic Forum (W.E.F.) in 2018: “The global pay gap between men and women will take 202 years to close, because it is so vast and the pace

54 Women’s Aid: https://www.womensaid.ie/16daysblog/2015/11/28/day-4-one-in- every-two-women-murdered-in-ireland-a/ And “Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes” https://www.wcsap.org/help/about-sexual-assault/how-often-does-it-happen (WCSAP, 2017). Please see Appendix for further statistics. 55 https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/number-of-women-in-senior- academic-roles-still-lags-at-third-level-859682.html

187 of change so slow … The WEF found that on average women across the world are paid just 63% of what men earn. There is not a single country where women are paid as much as men”. And goes on to state that “In the workplace, women still encounter significant obstacles in taking on managerial or senior official roles,” the report said. “When we consider only managers for the subset of countries for which recent data are available, just about 34% of global managers are women” (Neate, 2018). For more figures see below.56 This is stark reading and it really struck me during the campaign how difficult sexism was going to be to root out. I want to now take a deeper look at some of the statistics pertaining to women in the world of folk and traditional music. Research in this area is scarce but growing and the proceedings of a conference organized in NUIG will be published in an edition of Ethnomusicology Ireland, an online journal of the International Council for Traditional Music Ireland, edited by Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, Síle Denvir, and Úna Monaghan in 2021. This conference was on the subject of women and traditional/folk music. Much valuable research was generated and statistic compiled. Fintan Vallely57 gathered some statistics on the recipients of the Gradam Cheoil TG458 awards and found that of the 21 recipients of the Musician of the Year Award only 3 females or 14% were female (Vallely, 2020). The Life Time Achievement award could perhaps be excused for having less women as in the past there were a lot less women in the field, certainly playing professionally.

56 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/18/global-gender-pay-gap-will-take- 202-years-to-close-says-world-economic-forum 57 Fintan Vallely: Flute player and editor of The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, was the music columnist with the Irish Times from 1994-2000. His published works include Sing Up! Irish Comic Songs and Satires for Every Occasion (2008) He has played on numerous albums. 58 Gradam Cheoil TG4: “…is the premier annual traditional music awards scheme and academy. An independent panel of adjudicators selects recipients each year. It is not a competition. The Gradam Cheoil recipients are presented with a specially- commissioned piece by leading sculptor John Coll as well as a small stipend” (TG4, 2019).

188 MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR WINNERS 1998-2018

Female Male

14%

86%

But for the Young Musicians of the Year award which is drawing from a pool of younger people, there is no excuse not to include women. Of the 21 awards only 6 were awarded to women which comprises of 29%. They are drawing from a pool of musicians that comprises fairly equal numbers in terms of gender as will be seen from the further statistics below. In my conversations with Niall Vallely he stated that in terms of the Young Musician of the Year award “that this could provide an opportunity for the organisers of the awards to redress the gender imbalance of the more historical awards” (Vallely, 2019).

YOUNG MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR 1998-2018

Female Male

29%

71%

189 OVERALL GRADAM CHEOIL AWARDS 1998-2018

Female Male

24%

76%

From my own experience of teaching in Comhaltas and the University of Limerick my classes consisted mainly of women. Now perhaps this is because I am teaching singing primarily and historically more women gravitate towards singing. In her research Úna Ní Fhlannagáin59 compiled statistics on gender within Irish traditional music. This blog was inspired by research and statistical work done by Liz Coleman60 and presented at the Women and Traditional/Folk Music symposium on the 9th of February 2019. Úna looked at students of traditional music at Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in UL. She found that women comprised 63% of graduates on the BA course and 60% of graduates on the MA course (Ní Fhlannagáin, 2019). Other statistics from Úna’s blog include figures on people taking part in the 2018 Connacht Fleadh61; 424 out of 743 contestants or 57% were female, so there is no shortage of young women playing traditional music. The culture of sexism is so pervasive that it dissuades many of these brilliant young women from playing or even thinking of entering into this world. It should be considered that most traditional musicians do not pursue music as a professional career and perhaps some women view it as being too precarious a lifestyle and incompatible with childrearing if they chose that path. But even taking these points into consideration the imbalance is still striking to say the least.

59 Úna Ní Fhlannagáin: harper and singer and member of FairPlé. See Úna.ie 60 Liz Coleman: A physicist in NUIG and a traditional fiddler based in Galway. 61 Fleadh: “Literally ‘feast of Music’ …A non-commercial festival of traditional music devised and run by CCÉ,” (Vallely, 2010) p269.

190

TG4 awardees 1998-2018 (TG4, 2019)

24 % of awards were given to women

1/ ‘Musician of the year’ (seen as the top award) 14% - 3 out of 21;

2/ ‘Young musician’ 29% - 6 out of 21;

3/ ‘Lifetime achievement’ 17% - 3 out of 18;

4/ ‘Singer of the year’ 50% - 9 out of 18;

5/ ‘Special contribution’ 20 % - 2 out of 10 (3 awards given to organisations)

6/ ‘Composition’ 13% - 2 out of 15.

Overall

25/106 female – 24%

191